Misericórdiae
by salmonbutter
Summary: Two years before the fall of Wall Maria, Erwin discovers a group of clandestine engineers outside the walls. He is entrusted with a prodigious secret: the invention of aeroplanes. He takes them under the Legion's wing, promising shelter from the MP's surveillance and the King's tyranny. Along the way, he finds himself bewitched by a young engineer named Lyor. Erwin/OC
1. Chapter 1: The Woods

That fateful night, the Scouting Legion never knew what hit them. Screams, gurgles, and the snapping of bones was heard throughout the thick pine forest.

"Retreat, retreat!"

Over the torrential rain, the squad leader barely heard the command. He pulled hard on his horse's reins, earning a cry from the steed. His head jerking in the opposite direction, he spotted someone's wings of freedom crest through the deluge and he jolted his steed in their direction. He opened his mouth to repeat his commander's instruction to his squad member but he was interrupted by a colossal, swooping hand. In a blink of an eye, his squad member had disappeared from his sight. He didn't allow this to stun him. Instead, he sprinted full steam ahead. Perhaps it was heartless, but he took a split second decision that could save his life and many others.

They had entered directly into a group of titans. As they grasped the severity of the ambush, the entire corps had dispersed in panic. It was only normal; with a handful of new recruits, low visibility, and a lack of proper formation, the squad leader had predicted this outcome. His goal was now to exit the forest as fast as possible, not out of cowardice, but out of common sense. Without an effective way of communicating, every soldier's first instinct would be to get the hell out of there and regroup before attempting a rescue.

He couldn't even tell if he was on the dirt road anymore. He was out of breath from trying to hold back his panic and soaked to the bone with mud and rain. His eyes unable to keep up with the blur of movements through the sheet of rain, he trusted his horse to dodge through the shrubs and trees. However, not even his steed had enough time to sidestep the enormous threat waiting for them ahead.

The 10 meter titan brought her great hand down to the ground, as if trying to squash him like an insect. Her hand smacked right into his side. He heard the splintering of his bones in his head. The impact caused his horse's legs to lift off the ground, and sent both of them flying through the air. He felt something in his leg burst once his horse landed on him, followed by a violent convulsion of pain. He and his horse were thrown several meters, tumbling about on the forest floor. Thoroughly coated in mud, he finally ended up on his stomach. His breaths were shallow, painful, and raspy; whether it was from being winded, several broken ribs, or from the large branch punctured straight through his chest, he couldn't tell. Dread washed over him when he couldn't move his head. Was his neck broken? When he finally found the strength to contort his head to the side, he stared at death itself in the eyes.

A grotesque visage gawked at him. Her monstrous hand reached out towards him; the epitome of gluttony. Unable to move, he could simply watch her hand approach his broken body as his vision began to blur.

"Erwin!" A voice shouted, piercing through the rain.

He heard the familiar zip of 3DMG before he found a person whipping through the air, weapon bared. With a war cry, his colleague brought their swords down upon the titan. The last thing Erwin saw before he fell unconscious was the sight of his fellow soldier being caught in the titan's hold as if they had been a pesky fruit fly. An earsplitting wail echoed in his ears and the image of the eruption of blood in the titan's hand engrained itself into the back of his eyelids.

* * *

The forest was quiet. Not a leaf moved in the breeze. The trees were not rustling; they were listening to the footsteps, horses, and wagons that echoed softly through the grounds. The group of travellers followed the path trodden by those long dead. Lyor could feel everything around her was steeped in loneliness.

"Wow," a civilian spoke, adjusting the backpack on his shoulders. "Something really horrendous happened here."

A group of seven strode through the remains of a battlefield. Strangely, they hadn't seen a single body. They didn't respond to the comment that was made; it made the entire group uneasy to come to the conclusion of what had happened to the bodies in titan territory.

"Will you just shut your mouth?" The man driving the wagon replied. "Some of us are already nervous enough just being out here."

"What's there to be nervous about?" The other man shot back. "The titans already had their breakfast!"

"Do you kiss your damn mother with that morbid mouth?"

Lyor surveyed the forest floor carefully as she walked along with her group, drowning out the sound of her group's bickering. The forest ground was blemished with multiple skid marks, trampling of horses, and remains of broken wood. She spotted a splintered tree nearby and what seemed to be dried blood. She shuddered and averted her eyes, imagining the sickening sound of a body hitting the trunk. However, something unusual caught her eye as she looked away: a peculiarly shaped mound of mud. She slowed her pace and squinted. Something metallic near the mound reflected the light from the sun.

"Lyor, where are you going?" Someone asked after her as she drifted from the group. She needed to take a closer look to silence the little voice in her head.

She didn't bother responding and instead made her way off of the dirt path and deeper into the forest. She reached the mound and recognised the glimmering metal; a broken military blade. Her eyes widened.

A man was sprawled on the ground, covered in so much mud that he looked like a pile of dirt. Save for the spared strand of hair, she wouldn't have been able to even tell that his hair was blond.

She gasped and immediately kneeled down to his side, unloading the bag from her shoulders. She rolled him over onto his back and turned his unconscious face towards her. It was covered in a sickening mix of blood and dirt. She leaned down and turned her ear towards his agape mouth, listening for his breathing as she pressed her fingers into his neck to feel for his pulse. Her heart twisted in panic when she felt a trembling breath on her ear.

"There's someone here! He's alive!" She forced herself not to yell as she stood up and turned to her group. Her brows knit in worry, she waved them over. Her comrades froze in their spots and gave each other incredulous looks. "He's hurt! Bring the med kit!"

They scrambled about, rushing to her side after they dug up their medical kit from the wagon.

Lyor moved over, allowing Heinrich, the most experienced member of her group, to take over. He scrutinised the man's wounds. From the top of his head to his feet, the older man felt around for damage.

"He's military," Rick sourly observed, kicking at the shattered blade on the ground.

"Yes, but he's a scout," Lyor corrected him. "The military police wouldn't be outside of the walls like this."

"Doesn't matter," He replied dryly, looking over someone's shoulder to get a better look at the soldier. "They're all the sa-"

"Most of his ribs are cracked or broken," Heinrich interrupted, wiping his brow. "He has a branch puncturin' his chest, his left ankle is fractured, and I wouldn't be surprised if he had some sort of head injury." Heinrich turned to his mates. "He won't make it even if we leave 'im a horse. He needs to be treated. Soon."

"I'll go clear a space to carry him in the wagon," Lyor turned on her heels without a second thought, but Rick caught her shoulder.

Rick scoffed, his eyes aloof as he scanned over the small group. "Did you not hear me when I said he was military? Do you know what the they'll do to us if they find out what we're doing out here?"

"We can't leave him," Lyor nudged her shoulder out of his grasp and continued on her way.

"Wait, Lyor," at the sound of her father's voice, she stopped. She turned to look him in the eyes. His amber eyes searched for her understanding. "Rick is right. We can't risk our entire group for one man."

"He's practically gone already…" Max muttered, a cigarette bobbing from his lips as he spoke.

Lyor took a look around the group and to her dismay, realised they were all in a silent agreement. Some nodded, and some simply hung their head, avoiding her gaze. Lyor clenched her fists, her knuckles turning white.

"How can you all be so cruel? He's someone's son! Or someone's father!" Lyor exclaimed.

"Lower your voice," Rick whispered harshly, skeptically surveying the forest grounds.

"Please understand," hushed Wilhelm, her father. He stepped closer to her. "It isn't safe for us to take him in."

"It's against my oath as a practitioner to leave 'im," Heinrich abruptly stood from the unconscious man and faced the group. He wiped his goggles with a cloth and continued matter-of-factly. "Leave me two horses and a tent. He'll survive the night and come morning, I'll take 'im back to the walls."

Lyor scoured Heinrich's face for any sort of sign that he was joking. She didn't find any. "I'll help you."

"You both know we can't separate the group," Rick argued, rolling his eyes. "It's too dangerous out here for an old man and a woman who can't even stay loyal to her cause."

"You accuse me of being disloyal because I won't let an innocent man die?"

"Enough," Wilhelm silenced his daughter. "No one is separating from the group and we are certainly not going back to walls so early into our expedition. We'll take him in on certain conditions."

The group turned to Wilhelm, stunned.

"You're kidding…" Rick crossed his arms and frowned, waiting for his leader's explanation.

"We'll treat him. If he survives, he is to stay inside his tent at all times. When we're on the move, the contents of every wagon will be concealed, and I'm sure I don't need to mention that not a single word of our plans will be shared with him. As far as he'll be aware, we're all researchers gathering foreign plants. When he is well enough, he will journey back to the walls alone. Understood?" Wilhelm eyed each individual sternly, quashing any objections with a glare the moment someone opened their mouth to protest. "Let's get him in a wagon and set up camp nearby."

Lyor nodded to her father, quietly thanking him for his empathy, and started her way to the wagon as everyone bustled about. However she was stopped yet again by a hand on her arm.

"Don't make me regret this," Her father cautioned. Lyor's lips pressed into a thin line.

"You can't regret saving another's life," She replied and carefully slipped out of Wilhelm's grasp.

The brown haired man watched his daughter run back to the wagons with their comrades. He let out a sigh.

"I told you she was too damn virtuous to come with us," Heinrich commented on his friend's distress as he bent down to the young man sprawled on the forest floor.

Wilhelm turned to him, taking off his hat to smooth down his hair. "You're not one to speak."

A weak groan erupted from the solider's throat as Heinrich yanked the piece of wood embedded in his chest out in one fluid motion. Wilhelm grimaced at the blood stained wood that Heinrich held up.

Heinrich sloppily flashed his set of yellow teeth. "Mahogany. Nice choice, soldier."


	2. Chapter 2: Mr Reichart

Darkness stretched and swirled, seemingly endless. No pain nor awareness nor despair. Simply nothingness.

To his confusion, the darkness began receding. The farther away it slipped, the harder he grabbed for it and the faster if left him. In its wake, blooming pain — excruciating and annoying, coming from too many places. Exhaustion weighted his body like lead. The closer he drew to consciousness, the heavier that feeling became.

He was conscious, but opening his eyes felt like an arduous feat. Erwin tentatively allowed himself to relax, cataloguing what hurt and what didn't. Breathing hurt the most.

He reluctantly opened his eyes. Everything was blurry, but he could make out the space around him; some sort of dimly lit tent. A desk, a bed, and a few scattered chairs. A tilt of his head brought the face of a young woman into focus. She was sitting on a chair, deeply captivated by the book in her hands, her long lashes dusting her cheek. She was attired in a simple pair of pants with a button up shirt tucked into them, and her brown hair was pulled back into a bun.

His throat felt awfully dry and it took several swallows before he could speak. All that came out was a croak before his voice dissolved into the dryness of his throat.

The woman jerked her head up from her book, and her honey eyes met gunmetal blue. The clarity of her amber eyes from halfway across the room surprised him. They seemed so familiar. Her mouth fell open upon meeting his gaze. She was shocked. He stared back at her quietly, calm and collected, though his jaw was tense with uncertainty. How long had he been out?

They gawked at each other for a few more moments before she stood from her chair and began to speak. Her voice was level and soothing. "Are you thirsty?"

Erwin blinked at her for a few seconds, startled by the girl's anticipation. He suddenly became aware of how cracked and dry his lips were. He nodded. He watched the girl tuck her book under her arm to carry a carafe and glass from the table that was across from his bed.

As she shuffled about, Erwin tested the movement in his arms before bringing one of his hands up from under the blanket. He ran his hand over his face and discovered — much to his dismay — thick stubble. He must've been out for at least a week.

He propped himself on his elbows, his face contorting in pain as he tried to sit himself up.

"Oh, please," He heard her rush over to his bedside and a cool hand was placed on his clammy forehead. He repressed a tremor at her touch; she touched him as if he would shatter under her fingers. The contact made him abandon his struggle. "Don't push yourself."

He lulled his head as far as his injuries allowed him to to look up at her. It wasn't very far, and he couldn't see her.

"Drink this first," the stranger slipped her hand under his head and helped him bring his lips to the glass of fresh water she held in front of him. Cautiously, Erwin took a first gulp. Though it was simply water, after the first instant it touched his tongue, it tasted like Heaven's nectar. He forced himself not the inhale the water like a deprived and parched fool. Still, he downed the entire glass in a few seconds.

"Thank you," he said, breathless. He attempted to prop himself up on his elbows again.

He felt the same cool hand on his bare shoulder as he shifted. She moved the pillows against the headboard behind him. The sheets slipped off of his chest as he strenuously sat himself up, revealing his bandaged abdomen. The young woman helped him tilt backwards until his back rested on the pillows.

He gazed up at her with penetrating blue eyes — strands of her brown wavy hair escaped her bun and framed her oval face. He had earned himself a rosy-lipped smile as she searched deep into his eyes for something unbeknownst to him.

"Well, well," a voice croaked from the front of tent. "Welcome back, sleeping beauty."

An old man entered the tent at that moment, goggle covered eyes dismissively set on Erwin. Erwin watched him approach the foot of his bed. The old man's white hair was wild, and his clothes were covered in some kind of black oil. He reminded Erwin of an evil genius trope from a book he used to read as a child.

Erwin blinked at his oddness while he heard the girl beside him stifle a laugh.

The 80 year old revealed beady black eyes as he plucked his goggles from his eyes and snapped them over his forehead before reaching — much to Erwin's discomfort — for the blond's face. It was Erwin's instinct to flinch away from the stranger's reach.

"I liked you better when you were blacked out. Quit yer squirming," the old man placed his hand on top of Erwin's head to keep him still and shone the light from his bedside candle into his eyes. "Look left. Look right. Up. Down. Good; you've recovered from your concussion. Now there's just the microscopic dilemma of your broken ankle and ribs," the white haired doctor gave the solider a goodhearted smack on his injured foot. Erwin had a hard time concealing his wince. The doctor exclaimed to himself at Erwin's reaction, walking over to the desk to grab some medicine. "His left foot is broken, Heinrich! Left!"

"Old man, be more gentle with the poor kid; he just woke from a coma," Tall and concealed by shadows, another man entered the tent. "Glad to have you back amongst the living, son. You are in better health, I presume?"

He carefully eyed the man who addressed him as he stepped into the light of the candles by Erwin's bed; late fifties, slim build, greying brown hair slicked into a low ponytail, and a trimmed salt and pepper beard. He resisted the urge to narrow his eyes at the familiar face staring back at him. He knew this man somehow…

"Yes, thank you," Erwin replied mechanically, buying himself some time to think. The cogs in his brain turned as the two men stared at each other until it all clicked. Erwin knew exactly who he was. "…Mr. Reichart."

At this, a spark was lit in Wilhelm Reichart's eyes and he smirked. In the corner of his eye, Erwin saw the young woman's head jerk in Wilhelm's direction, most likely wondering how he knew his name.

"It's been a while, Erwin," Wilhelm soothed. "If only your father could see the man you've become."


	3. Chapter 3: Shepherd's Pie

_He had liked the smell of the rain. But after today, it smelt of guilt and tragedy._

 _He stood aimlessly; his Sunday clothes soaked through from the rain. His eyes blank, he read the plate over and over again. He was too numb to cry. Too stupefied to process the situation._

 _'Here lies Christopher Smith. 778-825. May he rest in peace.'_

 _Three hours had passed since the burial, but the little blond boy was paralysed to his spot, towering over the tombstone. Some of the adults around him had tried to get him to leave with them under their umbrellas, uttering words of condolences. But moving meant that he would have to carry on. Moving meant he would have to continue his life without his father. Moving would mean that he accepted his father's death. So he stayed perfectly still, thinking that if he didn't move, all of this would go away as fast as it had happened._

 _He, alone, remained with his father._

 _"Erwin," a friendly voice cooed. From the corner of his eye, he spotted a man squatting beside him. "Let's go home. My wife made shepherd's pie for dinner."_

 _His mouth refused to function despite his brain's command. He continued to stare at the fresh grave, his soul absent from his eyes. He felt the man staring a hole into him for several minutes._

 _"Papa, what's wrong with him?" Erwin heard an infantile voice grow closer. He watched a small girl no older than five years approach her father from his peripheral vision._

 _"Shh," her father, who he recognised as Mr. Reichart, hushed her. He had been his father's close friend. "Erwin is not feeling well."_

 _"Why not?"_

 _"His heart is hurting."_

 _His heart, his lungs, his brain, his stomach, his skin was hurting. Everything felt poisoned._

 _A few minutes passed before his view of his father's grave was suddenly blocked by a blur of white. When his eyes focused, he found a white Camellia flower in front of his nose. Blinking, he took the flower into his hand, bringing the infant into his view. Her bright honey eyes were the first bit of colour he had seen in days._

 _"Sometimes when I'm hurting, I count the petals on the flowers," she said very matter-of-factly. "When I'm done counting, I don't feel sad anymore. Then, I eat shepherd's pie to scare the sadness away."_

 _The little girl stood beside him and held his hand. She peered over the flower in his hand and started counting. He listened to her count, her small finger pointing at the different petals. Erwin was lulled into a trance as she counted._

 _By the time she reached twenty-eight, Erwin began to see colour again._

* * *

Lyor peered at the immensity of the blue sky in the open fields, taking a bite out of her apple. The sky was so beautiful without any walls obstructing it. She wondered when she would finally be able to cruise the sky; alone and free up in the clouds. She wanted to see what life looked like as a bird.

"Head's up!"

Lyor barely had the time to get up and run away as one of her mates, Max, hit the ground running from the air. He was attached to a box kite glider, his hands gripping the wooden bars. She watched him slowly come to halt, carefully tipping the giant fabric and wooden wings onto the ground. "Forty-three seconds of airtime! And I stuck the landing!" Max exclaimed, untying the leather belts that buckled him into the prototype glider.

"Congrats!" Lyor called to him, sarcasm in her voice. She walked over to him. "Too bad you didn't fly more than five meters off the ground and flew straight into a titan's crotch!"

"Hey, just because we're not using this model right now doesn't mean we should stop practicing with it," Max responded. Lyor helped him unlatch the bindings of the box kite glider.

Lyor looked around, pretending not hear Max. "I'm sorry, do you hear someone talking? Oh, wow, I didn't know dead people could still speak after being devoured by a titan."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Max copied her tone and started circling the contraption for any damage. "I didn't know people scared of flying could become aeroplane engineers."

Lyor rolled her eyes and helped Max fold the glider in half. He laughed, his teeth showing underneath his thick moustache.

"Did you try out the gas valves on the wings?" She asked, finishing her apple.

"I did; it weighed the whole thing down. We'll have to try something else," Max responded, taking off the series of belts and latches he was wearing. "But I gotta say, this 3DMG latch setup works like a charm!"

Lyor frowned. "You better return that to the scout before he leaves. He'll need it for the way back."

The brunette watched him light his umpteenth cigarette of the day. The middle-aged man shrugged. "I don't think Wilhelm's going to send him home on his own."

"Why not?"

"I overheard him talking to Smith about how screwed his ankle is. Heinrich wants to give it at least another day. We'll be leaving by that time regardless — might as well have a scout escort us home," Max began packing his equipment into a crate. A movement caught his eye and he nodded his head in its' direction. "Speak of the devil. I think your old man wants you."

Lyor twisted around to find her father waving her over a few hundred meters away before disappearing into the dense forest bush. She turned back to Max. "Need any more help?"

"Nah," he replied, his breath smoky. "I'm almost done. I'll meet you back at camp. Rick is somewhere around, too."

Lyor nodded and headed back to their campground. She entered the forest bush and began hiking up a steep hill. She thought about what Max had told her. Her father had been so stern about taking in this soldier, and suddenly he wanted to keep him close? He must've known this guy really well, she thought.

Lurching up the almost 60 degree incline, she steeled herself for the last few meters up the hill. Finally, she reached the top, panting, where she found her group's campground. Four tents were erected in a circle around a campfire, their horses grazing leisurely the grass. It was the perfect vantage point; they could see for miles and miles for incoming titans, their camp peeking just enough out of the woods. From here, they also had access to a prime launching area for their gliders and planes.

"Look at it, woman! I told you not to touch the vapour turbine!" Lyor watched Heinrich and Faye squabble over a leaking steam engine, wrenches held up in the air, ready to strike.

Faye, a lanky girl in her late teens, waved her slender arms in the air in exasperation. "If I hadn't released the pressure vapour, we'd both be two roasted kebabs right now!"

"Oh, the exaggeration!" Heinrich slammed his wrench onto the ground, stomping over to his workbench.

Lyor's smile quickly dissipated at the realisation that all of their materials and equipment were sprawled out in the open. Her father had specifically told them to keep their crap out of sight, in case the soldier saw. Now suddenly, Heinrich and Faye had one of their steam engines out on display. This made her walk faster towards Erwin's tent, where her father and the latter surely waited for her. She knew the two men had planned to catch up this afternoon; her father had requested it the night before when Erwin and he reunited. With Erwin being too exhausted to handle much, last night's introductions were cut short after her father had interrupted.

Lyor knocked on the wooden crate placed outside Erwin's tent, and her father's voice allowed her to enter. She pushed through the fabric and entered the tent, revealing two men sitting at the wooden table. Her eyes locking with his sapphire gaze, she was surprised to see Erwin out of bed. He nodded politely at her, and she smiled politely back. He was wearing a clean, navy button up shirt tucked into a pair of grey fabric pants — surely borrowed from her father or Max, who had similar builds. His blond hair was combed but still looked a little messy to her with his bangs falling in front of his eyes. She was also startled to see how lucid his regard was compared to last night. Must've had a good rest, she noted.

"Lyor," her father snapped her out of her curious stare. "Have a cup of tea with us, would you?"

Her lips pulled into another diplomatic smile and she nodded. She walked over to the table and pulled a chair out, sitting between the two men who sat on either end of the table. Her father silently slid a cup of tea over to her.

"Erwin, this is my daughter, Lyor," Wilhelm stated. Lyor pretended not to feel the blond's gaze on her as she cupped her hands around her mug. "You must remember her. You two were quite close when you stayed with our family, even if you stayed only for a few months."

With raised eyebrows, Lyor looked at her father, mouth opening to ask what on Earth he was talking about. He beat her to it.

"Lyor, this is Erwin Smith. I was his father's best man. When Erwin was ten, his father died, and we took him in for a few months."

"Oh," Lyor cheerlessly turned her gaze to Erwin who watched her with a small smile. Her brows knit in embarrassment. "I'm so sorry. I don't remember you."

Her father chuckled. "You were only four years old."

"I only remember you handing me a flower at my father's funeral," Erwin admitted, firmly holding her gaze. She squirmed in her seat under his intimidating stare; his penetrating sapphire eyes commanding her utmost attention. "You had also told me that the secret warding off sadness was to eat shepherd's pie."

Lyor bit her lip and laughed embarrassedly, breaking their eye contact as her face flushed. Her father snorted.

"Well, her mother did make a hell of a shepherd's pie," Wilhelm's gaze softened as he watched his daughter forlornly. "Isn't that right?"

Lyor hummed in agreement, her lip twitching into a bitter smile.

"Lyor was the one who found you collapsed in the forest," Erwin listened carefully as Wilhelm spoke to him. "Honestly, we wouldn't have spotted you had it not been for the glint of your sword; you were covered in mud. I'm assuming that's why you weren't eaten since we didn't find any other bodies."

Behind her cup of tea, Lyor observed Erwin's Adam's apple bob as he drank his tea. There was something off about him. The young man – older than she was – didn't look particularly friendly at the mention of his fallen comrades. There was something in his face that told her he was aloof — whether it was the squareness of his jaw, or perhaps the shape of his sharp cheekbones. He was handsome, and he was difficult to read. Her eyes followed the outline of his jaw, down his stubbled cheek, to his exposed neck; he kept a few of his shirt buttons undone, surely to keep his abdominal wounds properly aired out. She swallowed hard, averting her eyes before they could greedily travel to the view of his bare chest where she had spotted the start of a gauze bandage.

"What are the odds?" Erwin commented smoothly. He caught Lyor's eyes. "Thank you for finding me. I don't know how to repay you."

"Do you remember what happened to you?" Lyor pressed, dodging his politeness with a quick smile.

He exhaled pointedly through his nose and peered into his teacup. She noticed a twinge in one of his thick eyebrows as he took a moment to recall the events. "Yes, I was on an expedition with my regiment. It was pouring rain. Without much visibility in the Venhurst woods, we were easily ambushed by a group of titans and I was knocked off of my horse by one. I must've tumbled for at least a hundred meters before I lost consciousness."

Lyor pressed her lips into a grim line. "No one came back to look for you?"

"I'm sure they did but as Wilhelm said, camouflaged in the mud, I was only spotted by chance," Erwin answered. He hesitated for a few seconds before he continued to speak. "But I'm relieved it turned out this way." Lyor watched his grip tighten around his cup. She shot him a questioning look.

"This way, I was able to witness your group's engineering feats," The blond confessed. "I want to help you further your research."

Lyor's eyes widened three times their normal size before she scrutinised her father's expression. He offered a shrewd smirk.

"You — what did you tell him?" She demanded, appalled at her father's judgement.

"Everything." Wilhelm answered simply.

She stammered, "On what grounds?!"

"Lyor," her father's demeanour abruptly shifted. Sombrely, he continued. "Erwin's father was tortured and killed by the military police for merely pointing out discrepancies and contradictions to his son in the history books they gave you children at school. They covered up Christopher's murder as an accident, leaving his only son orphaned."

The young woman confirmed this by looking over at Erwin. He didn't meet her eyes and instead stared into his cup of tea, withdrawn.

"Erwin shares our vision and motivation," Wilhelm punctuated. Her eyes dragged back to her father. "He's next in line to be commander of the Survey Corps. With the Survey Corps' funding and support, we can finally move forward with our research."

Lyor scowled, her amber eyes burning a hole through her father.

Wilhelm sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Look, I understand this makes the group uneasy, but you have to trust me. I knew Erwin's father very well. Not only is he the spitting image of Christopher, but what could possibly motivate him to betray us? Do you really want to remain static like we have for the past six years?"

"After what happened to mother, you decide to do this without everyone's consent?" Lyor spoke lowly, standing assertively from her chair. Her father watched her with an icy expression, almost daring her to finish her thought. "After what happened to your wife?"

The two brunets glared at each other in forbidding silence before their attention turned to Erwin. He stood up from his chair, cooly, and with a slight limp, took two steps to be faced with Lyor. He towered over her, her nose barely reaching his chin. She glared up at him, trying to ignore the suddenly intoxicating scent of his person. She stood her ground as he looked down at her with an unreadable expression, his gunmetal eyes unwavering.

"Ms. Reichart," his tone was unyielding, but the formality kept him distant. "You saved my life. Do you really assume me to be so treacherous? Given what the military did to my father, do you really believe that I am anything like the men who used an innocent mother as a bargaining chip?"

Lyor blanched at his words but she continued to glare at him. _Father wasn't kidding when he said he had told him everything._ He searched for an answer to his questions in her eyes.

When she didn't answer him, he continued. He leaned into her face, his eyes like burning coals that ordered her to look at him. She felt his feverish breath on her skin, and despite her fire, her heart began to race. This time, it was Erwin's turn to smoulder, his words oozing authority, "I have _nothing_ in common with those men."

* * *

Author's notes: Your comments are my writing fuel.

Also disclaimer: I don't know shit about planes or engineering. I also realise that planes were only invented after the invention of the steam engine and that that has yet to be introduced in this geographical area of AOT, but just pretend that steam engines have already been invented, 'kay? For the sake of Lyor and Erwin?


	4. Chapter 4: Margins

The air was crisp with autumn perfumes. It was one of those perfect autumn days — the golden sun and fiery leaves bestowing the open air a comforting glow through the morning dew. It was an unsightly hour, but Lyor was consoled by this particular sunrise; it meant they could go home.

The entire group was buzzing about, packing and securing wagons and horses, and dismantling their campsite. It had now been 20 minutes since their departure briefing, her father laying out the route and instructions for them. Lyor was busy quietly equipping her horse with a saddle and packs of various tools and equipment. It was the last thing she had to do before they departed. With busy hands, she peered past the remains of their campfire and admired the view of the misty mountains and forests from their vantage point. As much as she wanted to get out of titan territory, she'd miss being out here — past the suffocating walls. Between her group mates' buzzing, she spotted Erwin a few meters away from her.

He knelt on one knee beside one of their crates, a metallic frame with two cylinders sutured to it and some sort of pistol grip lever in his hands. She recognised it to be his 3DMG gear that they had recovered from the forest when they had found Erwin. She also noticed that he must have reclaimed his 3DMG straps from Max as he wore it overtop the same navy shirt and grey pants she had seem him in the night before. The straps around his legs disappeared into his knee-high military boots. He was tampering around with the contraption, pressing the trigger on his blade-less sword hilt after every adjustment he made. Lyor watched him for a while, his profile to her, until she realised his gear must've been busted. Wondering if she should help him, she hesitated.

Last night hadn't ended particularly poorly, but she didn't feel at ease with where she stood with the soldier. She felt embarrassed for having accused him of being unreliable even after hearing the conspiracy behind his father's death. After Erwin's intimidating interjection, Lyor couldn't stop thinking about how capricious she had been. Admittedly, as her father had said to her afterwards, she wasn't the only one who had lost someone due to corruption.

Buckling the last strap on her horse, she swallowed her pride and swiftly began to cross the distance between her and the blond. However, before she got halfway to him, Theo's back blocked her view of him. She watched the young group mate converse with him before Erwin handed him his gear, assumably for Theo to fix. Oddly disappointed that she couldn't help him herself, she watched their interaction. Only a few seconds passed before Erwin's gaze interlocked with hers — he must've felt her eyes on him.

Her breath hitched in her throat at the clarity of his eyes. Even from a distance, she couldn't reject them. She also couldn't ignore how different he looked with his hair neatly combed back into a sleek part over his undercut. With a freshly shaven face — flattering the shape of his powerful jaw —he appeared much more aggressive than with his scruffy stubble.

Unsure how to act, she tentatively offered a small, flustered smile. To her surprise, he returned the gesture. Even if it was simply out of politeness, she thought he looked charming wearing a smile; he didn't look at her as a military man would. He continued to hold their eye contact before Theo pulled him into a conversation. Her smile fading, she tore her watch away and turned her back to him to go back to her horse. She was oblivious to the slight acceleration in her heartbeat.

"Alright, folks," she heard Heinrich call from the wagons. "Let's hit the road."

With this, Lyor mounted her horse and tugged at her steed's reins. "Lyor," she turned her head to face the voice and saw her father looking up at her, dressed in a black coat and his habitual hat atop his head. "There isn't space in the wagons, or enough horses. Erwin will ride with you."

"Huh?" Miffed that she would have to share her horse with a stranger, she frowned. "Why can't you take him? Or Rick?"

"Rick and I weigh too much; he'll slow our horses down. And besides," Wilhelm replied nonchalantly and flashed a smile at his daughter. "Finders, keepers. He's your responsibility."

Lyor scoffed and rolled her eyes as her father walked away with a wave. Pausing, she looked at Erwin. Theo had finished fixing his 3DMG, and the blond was adjusting the apparatus to his lower back. She watched him throw on his sage-coloured cloak that she had washed for him when he was unconscious, displaying his wings of freedom. Exhaling through her nose, she resolutely urged her horse towards him.

His head turned upwards to her when she approached him. Curiously, he watched her guide her horse parallel to him.

"We've been paired up," she stated simply, wanting to match his general composure. She looked down at him with steadfast honey eyes. "Are you ready?"

Erwin finished his final adjustments to his gear before he nodded. "Let's go."

It was silently agreed that Lyor would steer, given that Erwin was still recovering from his injuries, and so Erwin mounted her horse behind her. She also wasn't going to let someone else ride her horse just because they were military when she was perfectly capable herself. His equipment rattled as he mounted, and as he adjusted on the saddle, she suddenly realised how close they were sitting together. She thought about how easily she could lean back and rest the back of her head on his chest. Trying to ignore that her back was pressed flush against his front, she gave her horse a gentle squeeze with the heel of her boots and headed towards the hill's descent.

Following behind Heinrich and Faye's wagon, they made their way down the most gradual part of the hill at a moderate walking speed. She tried to suppress the flush that threatened to break out on her face as she started feeling Erwin's body heat gradually seeping into her. _Maria, have mercy._

Once they reached the bottom of the hill and exited the forest into a clearing, the group found their respective formations as instructed during their briefing. Lyor and Erwin rode alongside Theo and Max's wagon. Beside them was Heinrich and Faye's wagon, whom had Wilhelm riding beside them. Finally, Rick, being the fastest rider of their group, rode in front.

After a few minutes, the group concluded that the coast was clear. Rick raised his hand to show a thumbs up, and the group collectively broke into a gallop to ride towards the sunrise. Towards home. Lyor felt Erwin's strong arms snake around her waist, just above her bellybutton. He leveraged her chastely, just as she'd expected from the noble man. In spite of this, Lyor couldn't help the butterflies that pestered her stomach.

* * *

Four hours had passed since their departure, and Lyor couldn't feel her legs.

"And then you just twist the valve back into place, and you're done!" She peered over her book to watch Theo and Faye show off their repairing skills to Erwin, the two of them gathered in front of him as he sat on a rock. The gas canister gave a sharp hiss as Theo fiddled with it. Erwin nodded thoughtfully, a hand on his chin.

In a forest clearing, the group sat together as they took a break to eat and stretch their legs. Lyor sat on the ground, a sandwich in one hand and her book in the other. Heinrich, Rick and Wilhelm were sitting in a cluster around a map, discussing their next route. Theo and Faye had taken it upon themselves to entertain the newcomer, and Max kept guard, ambling the circumference of his group with a cigarette in his mouth.

"Where did you two learn how to do this?" Erwin insightfully asked the teens. "I don't remember ever learning such high level chemistry at school."

"My father builds these canisters for the military," Theo gestured towards Max. "He taught me a lot of the stuff that I know. I can also lend you one of the textbooks my grandfather handed down to me if you're interested!"

Lyor smiled at Theo's enthusiasm. Ever since they had taken Erwin in, he had been mesmerised by the man. She supposed it was only normal, knowing that Theo wanted to become a scout. It wasn't every day that he got to meet a Scouting Legion squad leader.

"I'd very much like that," the soldier smiled back at the boy. He turned his head to Faye. "And you?"Lyor spotted a blush on Faye's porcelain skin and watched her dig her boot in the ground, looking away from the soldier. She answered quietly. "I-I've been studying physics and mathematics for a year now at the university of Sina."

"She's one of the youngest students to ever be admitted," Max casually added as he made his rounds by them, peering deeply into the forest behind them. Erwin's eyes slightly widened in admiration. "She's very gifted, and it was difficult to convince her to join us."

"Well, it wasn't so hard when Lyor took a stab at it," Theo nudged the girl provokingly. Once she was involved in the conversation, Lyor looked back at her book and pretended not to listen. "Faye was admitted into Lyor's second year master's engineering class, and all it took was a little girl talk to get you to join, right?""That's not what happened, you chauvinist," the dark haired girl crossed her arms, glaring at her friend.

"Then what happened?" Theo grinned mockingly as Faye slapped his arm. "You found out your upperclassman was secretly building planes and you decided to follow in your role model's footsteps?"

Faye huffed. "I guess."

"Aw, so cute!" Theo pinched Faye's cheek, jeering. Faye recoiled and swatted his hand away before she began her foray of insults, trying to fit in a couple of slaps along the way. Theo protected himself with his arms, laughing.

"Hey, keep it down, you two!" Max barked over their bickering.

Lyor felt Erwin's gaze on her but she tried to ignore it. She settled into her book, popping the last bite of her sandwich into her mouth as Faye and Theo yelled at each other. The title of her book read _The Social Contract_ by _Rousseau._

She had read this book multiple times as it contained some of her favourite philosophical theories: a government is only as strong as the people, and this strength is absolute, the absurdity for a man to surrender his freedom for slavery; that the people must have a right to choose the laws under which they live. She didn't necessarily agree with everything Rousseau had to say, but she found it remarkable that most of his theories directly correlated with the progression of their kingdom's government.

Now deeply engrossed by the words on the page, she drowned out the sound of Erwin's conversations with the two youths. She slid her finger under the next page as she finished the last sentence and flipped the page. She blinked in confusion at what she found next: foreign handwriting in the margins. Her eyes traced the curves of the cursive, trying to recognise the penmanship. Frowning and drawing back from her book, she carefully read through the notes.

The notes read developments on the teachings of Rousseau with shrewd comparisons of their own government's malfeasance. She drank these analyses in, wondering how she had never thought of certain points herself. The margin notes continued for several pages before she got to a page where all that was noted was a circled passage.

 _Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains._

She was torn from her reading when movement caught her eye. Looking to her left, she watched Erwin sit down next to her. He winced slightly at a particular movement of his foot. He didn't sit too close to her, but he sat near enough for her to realise that maybe this was the start of a friendship. His posture perfect and his shoulders square, he sat cross legged, leaning forwards with his forearms draping over his thighs. He didn't say anything when he looked at her.

"Did you write in the margins?" She asked bluntly.

"I did," his voice was smooth and warm. "I hope you don't mind; I didn't have much to pass the time when I was recovering, and your book was the only thing within my reach besides painkillers."

"Of course not," She took another look at his penmanship. She would have never guessed that the man who possessed such elegant handwriting would be a military man. She brought her eyes back up after pondering for a few moments. "If the titans never existed, your father hadn't been killed, and the government wasn't the godawful organisation it is today, what would you have done for a living?"

It was the first time she had heard him laugh, a bright smile revealing the age lines in the corner of his eyes. It was infectious, and she found herself laughing with him. "What a peculiar question," he commented, the remains of his smile pulling at his lips. He thought about it for a minute before he answered. "I think I would've become a teacher."

Lyor nodded, satisfied. "I thought as much. What's a military man doing reading Rousseau?"

He smirked. "What's a woman doing reading Rousseau?" Erwin's retort made Lyor knit her brows in vexation. She opened her mouth to dryly dismiss him before he spoke. "Do you not find him biased towards your gender? In _Émile_ , he writes _'woman observes, man reasons'_."

Lyor's mouth fell closed as she watched him in realisation. "' _For the works of genius are beyond her reach, and she has neither the accuracy nor the attention for success in the exact sciences'_." She added to his quote; she had it memorised from an essay she had written in her first year of university. It was her turn to laugh this time. Unbeknownst to her, he drank in her smile with ease. She paused to think about his question. "Yes, he's quite sexist, but I never really thought about it because of how outdated his point of view is. A lot women have already proved him wrong." Erwin hummed in agreement. "And, well, he's dead, so I can't really change his mind."

Erwin chuckled. "That's a good way to put it. I'm sure you would have been able to."

She smiled as they looked at each other. As their eyes poured into one another's, they fell into a comfortable silence. It was the first time she really looked at him. Impartially. Noble, proud features graced his visage: a bowed nose, a pleasing set of lips, and bushy eyebrows. What she hadn't noticed before was the faint line creasing his forehead — his worry line. What was it that plagued him with worry when no one was around to see it, she wondered.

Before they spent more time staring at each than propriety allowed, Lyor searched her head for a conversation topic. "Actually, I had a question about one of your notes," she admitted, shuffling through the pages of her book. She pinpointed his remark with her index and he leaned closer to her to read. "' _Each member is primarily a private self, secondly a magistrate, and thirdly a citizen. This sequence is exactly the opposite of what the social order demands'_." She read. "You wrote that Rousseau didn't seem like he properly understood the significance of this contradiction to his main point of the book. You said he didn't give it the inference it required. How was this a contradiction?"

Erwin smoothly took the book from her hands and flipped back a few pages. He pointed out a line to her, both of them inching closer to each other in order to see better. "On this page, he introduces the essence of the social contract. He explains that the most efficient way to change a society is to unite for a common cause. _'The weak are always in danger of being swallowed up, and indeed no people can well preserve itself except by achieving a kind of equilibrium with all the others which makes the pressure everywhere the same for all.'_ "

Lyor held the side of the book to get a better look at the quote. In doing so, her hand rested on top of his. She was so captivated by their conversation that she didn't notice their hands touching. Erwin did. "You mean to say that he contradicts himself by saying that this philosophy doesn't take into consideration the freedom for the individual well enough?"

"Precisely," he affirmed, watching her hum in comprehension as she took a closer look at the book. She couldn't see the way his eyes softened as he looked at her. She perked up to ask him another question.

From across the group, Wilhelm discreetly witnessed the two young adults across the way sharing a moment — some might even say a tender one. He watched Lyor's eyes sparkle in epiphany as the blond man conversed with her. In return, he noticed Erwin looking at his daughter as if she was the most fascinating thing he'd ever laid eyes on.

Wilhelm smiled.

* * *

Author's notes: I _also_ realise that Rousseau's books had no chance of surviving into the SNK era, but dream with me here, folks!

Comment if you enjoyed!


	5. Chapter 5: Run

They were now about forty-five minutes away from Wall Rose. Lyor could see the top of the walls in the horizon. Their route set for the secretive entrance to the walls, she could tell everyone was relieved to be going home. They had tested out the gas propellants on the gliders and had massively progressed on their first engine. Now, all they had to do was figure out how in the world they would build such a massive frame. They didn't have the space, the funds, the materials, nor the permission from the government to continue such a feat. Deemed too dangerous for experimentation after presenting a proposal for his research at the university of Sina, Wilhelm was not only denied a research grant but received a cryptic notice from the Military Police on behalf of the royal family to cease all further aeronautics research. It only fuelled his desire to pursue this research.

Ten years had passed since he had been warned, and after discovering an underground passageway that led beyond the walls 2 years later, Wilhelm had recruited a small group of engineers, including his own daughter, to execute experiments and designs. The secretive passageway was run by an underground gang. The toll was high, but this passageway had permitted the group to accomplish half a dozen excursions — away from the watchful eye of the Military Police.

By day, Wilhelm worked as the lead engineer at the company that supplied cannons for the military. It was how he could afford to send his daughter to the innermost wall to pursue her studies. It was also how he had met Max, who supplied the military their gas canisters, and his son, Theo. By night, he searched for smuggled bootleg materials for their projects from his factory, and drafted blueprints for their prototypes.

However, one disastrous night, Wilhelm and Max had been nearly caught by an MP officer in the military factory. Three days later, the Interior Police had come knocking on the Reichart's door. They turned their house upside down searching for any sort of incriminating documents or possessions. Knowing they had no evidence, Wilhelm denied all of their accusations, resulting in one of the officers to point a gun to his daughter and wife's head in a final attempt to prove their suspicions. Still, Wilhelm denied their allegations. The officers left, suspicious, but not without firing a warning shot into his wife's leg.

Lorelei Reichart had been ill with the plague that had circulated in their town at this time. Three months passed before she succumbed to the combination of disease, and an infected bullet wound.

Eight years later, here they were. Lorelei's death had only fed Wilhelm and Lyor's desire to defy the MP's indoctrination.

"Two ten-meter titans. Seven-hundred meters south from us," Erwin spoke evenly from behind Lyor, over the galloping. She nodded, now accustomed to having Erwin's arms wrapped around her middle after several hours of riding.

At Erwin's observation, she raised one of her hands and formed a series of hand gestures to Theo and Max. After a thumbs up, Erwin watched Max relay the same hand gestures to Heinrich and Faye, who then passed it on to Wilhelm. This continued until the entire group was informed of the forthcoming threat. With this, Rick hung a right and led the group into a sharp turn and covered their presence by a cluster of tall trees.

After a few minutes, Lyor twisted her head around to glance behind her and Erwin. She smirked to herself when she confirmed they had managed to lose the two titans. Her smirk quickly vanished upon looking back in front of her.

The same two titans crashed into sight from said cluster of trees. Lyor froze in dread as she watched the titans start to fall to the ground, about to obstruct their route within 100 meters. Unable to process any movements, Lyor wouldn't have time to dodge. She could only watch the impending disaster unfold before her eyes.

All of a sudden, she felt two strong arms circle around her and grab hold of her horse's reins. Erwin.

He hauled at the reins, the horse rearing and crying out with a whinny, forcing Lyor's weight to rest on Erwin's front with her back. With a gasp, she grabbed at his forearms for stability. When her steed landed, Erwin kicked at its' sides and steered it directly into the forest, away from the titans. But also away from her group.

"No!" Lyor cried out and attempted to regain control of her horse as they sped through the forest and away from the hair-raising noises. Erwin did not cede. "Turn back! We can't leave them!"

"We can't! Our only chance of helping them is if we escape in one piece!" Erwin exclaimed in response, his body enveloping hers as he leaned forward and rode.

"No! Go back!" She shrieked, outraged. The brunette swung her elbows back, trying to hit Erwin in his injured ribs to get him to release her reins.

"Look behind us!" Erwin bellowed over her futile jabs. Lyor stopped and her head jerked behind them to spot a titan shattering through trees, its eyes locked hungrily on the couple. She shuddered, her breath trembling. "Lyor, you have to trust me."

Through her panic, she noticed how her name sounded on his tongue. She wasn't sure how or why, but the heartening sound steadied her trembling. She felt Erwin shifting behind her, assessing the situation. "Take the reins."

Lyor obeyed and took the reins from his large, calloused hands. Behind her, she heard the jangling of metal followed by a bursting hiss and zip. She found herself alone on her horse. She looked over her shoulder to find Erwin in the air — a flurry of green and glimmering blades. She watched him anchor his grappling hooks directly into the titan's flesh before it towed him closer. He unleashed his attack; slicing cleanly behind the titan's neck. Using the titan as a stepping stone, he retracted his 3DMG hooks, aimed his hips, and squeezed his triggers. The grappling hooks shot past Lyor's head and into a tree a few meters ahead of her. Before she knew it, Erwin flew by her, and landed stiffly; his ankle still fractured. She slowed her horse to a halt in front of him. He was doubled over his ankle, his teeth clenched.

Lyor dismounted and ran to his side, a hand on his shoulder. She glanced back at the titan to watch it fall lifelessly to the forest ground. Taken aback by his skill, her eyes came back to his struggling form. She noticed him clenching his chest now.

"Erwin!" She squeezed his shoulder, trying to coax out a reason for his wincing.

He hissed in pain. "I'm fine. Get back on your horse. We have to get out of here."

Frowning at his dismissal, she grabbed his clenched hand and forced him to pull it away from his chest. She spotted a dark pool of colour on his navy shirt. Her lips pressed into a tense line. "Your sutures tore open." His cerulean eyes pierced through hers with assurance.

"I'll be fine." He repeated, fearlessly.

She helped him up and the two of them rushed back to her steed. He mounted first and took the reins, signalling that he would lead them. He shot her a look that told her everything she needed to know: neither of them had time to argue. She huffed to herself and stepped up onto her horse, straddling the beast behind the soldier. Lyor ineptly circled her arms around his waist, his 3DMG gear making it difficult for her to properly fasten her grip around him. He turned them around, kicked his heels, and the horse bolted forwards to return from whence they came.

Distressed, she tried to peer around his broad shoulders as they sped through the forest. She was anxious to get back to her friends. Lyor wasn't able to process much of the scenery except for green blurs as Erwin expertly hurried them through the thicket. Within minutes, they found themselves exiting the forest and face to face with a scene Lyor wasn't exactly ready to see.

Former wagons and equipment now shattered debris of splintered wood, broken metal, dead horses, and spilled oil. A pile of blood pooled under a body she recognised as Theo's. Lyor's face drained of its colour, and she felt her stomach lurch. The lower half of his body was missing. Aghast, her eyes spotted the second titan a few feet from them, devouring a lifeless carcass. Even through the blood stains, she distinguished the body by its' clothes: Max.

Dread suffocated her. She dismounted without a word and ran over to Theo. She felt the familiar spit that forms in your mouth before you're about to vomit; his dragged organs replaced where his pelvis should've started. She knelt helplessly beside his motionless and mutilated corpse, panting in panic. Erwin's movements caught her eye, and she watched him gallop towards the feasting titan, seizing the opportunity to attack while it was distracted. Deploying his grappling hooks, he flew through the air and shred through the nape of its' neck. He landed calculatingly in the horse's saddle, but she noticed how hard he was breathing. He clung at his chest, one eye shut in pain. Bringing her attention back to Theo, she swallowed the lump in her throat and reached to close the young boy's inanimate eyes as the titan fell.

"Forgive me, Theo." She spoke softly, caressing the boy's bangs out of his face. The gesture only smeared blood across his forehead. Movement in the background caught her eye: three more titans, about a kilometre away, were heading directly towards them at full sprint. She glanced at Erwin. He returned her glance, and for a split second, she thought he seemed mournful. Mournful for her. He gave her a knowing look; a look that meant they needed to leave before it was too late. Taking one last look at Theo, she inhaled sharply and stood herself up. Her legs almost buckled but she forced herself to ignore them.

She watched Erwin circle the area, his eyes scanning for any other casualties. She followed suit, ambling through the debris as she made her way to Erwin.

"I don't see anybody else," Erwin commented, looking down at her as she stared into the distance. "They must've escaped."

"We have to find them," Lyor replied flatly, never meeting his eyes. Erwin suspected she was in a state of shock. "Your injuries… Take my horse and go back to the walls. I'll stay here and look for them."

Erwin bit back a laugh of disbelief. "You'll get yourself killed. If anything, they escaped to the safety of the walls. Our best move is to head back."

Whether Lyor pretended not to hear him or actually didn't, Erwin would never know, but he watched her start to walk away from him after fetching supplies from her horse's pack. "Lyor, if they're out here, the only way he can help them is by staying alive." He called after her but received no acknowledgment. She continued walking away.

Without a second thought, he burst into a gallop, aiming straight at her. He swooped down, wincing at his exertion, and wrapped his hand around Lyor's arm. He hoisted her behind him and onto the saddle on her stomach. Keeping a hand flat on her back, he forced her down. He steered the horse in the direction of the walls and urged it to double its speed with a kick.

"No!" She howled, kicking her legs. "If you hadn't separated us, Max and his son would still be alive! I have to look for them! Let me go!"

Erwin said nothing, but his grip never loosened. She continued to yell and squirm under him as they sped away from her dead friends. Minutes passed, and so did her adrenaline. Erwin felt her tire herself out, and he finally released her. Lyor hung over her horse's saddle, uncomfortable and defeated. So many thoughts and emotions were running through her; she didn't know where to begin. She quietly pulled herself up behind Erwin, silencing her thoughts and letting herself be numb.

Erwin felt Lyor's arms loosely wrap around him as she settled into the saddle, and he took the liberty to accelerate their speed now that she was secured. Neither of them spoke a word as they rode towards the wall. Twenty minutes passed, and for the last ten minutes of their ride, Erwin felt Lyor press her forehead into his back. Her hands clenched into fists, bunching his shirt. Finally, he heard her sniffling softly. His brows knit, and he felt a familiar emotion knot his stomach: grief. Wanting to mask his emotions, he spoke monotonously.

"I promise I'll come back for them."

Between Erwin letting himself unwholesomely enjoy Lyor holding him close to her and Lyor sifting through her emotions, the next ten minutes flew by, and they found themselves at the wall's gate. The officers operating the gate quickly recognised Erwin and brought down a pulley. The two of them being brought over the gate was a blur to Lyor. She remembered Erwin's arm around her at one point.

She had absently watched Erwin explain to a soldier from the Garrison what had happened, concocting some sort of lie about why Lyor, a civilian, was found outside the walls. Every word that came out of anyone's mouth was foreign to her. The military paramedics had arrived to help Erwin with his busted sutures at some point, and she finally caught the words "shock" and "acute stress reaction" when one of them examined her.

The Garrison guards took them to one of the gate's stations to treat them, informing the blond squad leader along the way that three men had been rescued from outside the walls — one of them being injured. Their name's were Heinrich, Wilhelm, and Richard.

Lyor felt slight relief at this, but the information only revealed to her what she feared most: Faye was missing. Faye, a fifteen year old girl, was outside the walls. Abandoned, alone, and scared.

She wasn't sure how long she stood in that gate's station, gawking at the medic who worked on Erwin's sutures while a Military Police officer asked her a series of questions to which she grunted yes or no to. She replayed the horror scenes in her head and morbidly making up what Faye could be going through. Finally, she blinked herself into the present. Swatting the medic who told her to rest away, she simply walked towards the door without a word.

"Lyor?" Erwin's smooth voice echoed in her head. She turned at the feeling of his grip on her arm. She stared up at him, forgetting the gnawing pain of loss when she peered into the vastness of his eyes. A question lingered on his handsome features, but he didn't speak. His grip began to burn when she remembered that that same hand had forced her to abandon her friends.

She yanked her arm out of his hold and pierced a hole through him with her glare. "A life for a life. Now we are even."

Erwin could only watch her as she turned on her heels, opened the station's door, and slammed it shut behind her.

* * *

Author's notes: Thank you, Orcasforlife97! I'm glad you're enjoying it so far! Let me know what you think of this chapter. :D


	6. Chapter 6: Voltaire

"I won't tell you yes but that won't guarantee you won't do it, will it, Erwin?"

Commander Shadis and Erwin sat in the commander's office, two cups of coffee between them on Shadis' desk. Outside his window, the new recruits were doing their final afternoon physical training, announcing the end of the work day.

Erwin chuckled. "I wouldn't do anything so consequential without your approval, sir."

Shadis examined the papers in his hand one by one, leaning back in his seat. Erwin's commander hummed in thought as he read the personal files. His eyes glanced over the page to Erwin. "And these aeroplanes… You've seen them in person?"

"Yes, Mr. Reichart gave me a personal tour of each prototype. They're waiting for proper equipment to install their first engine into a frame," Erwin confirmed. "He mentioned it would be their first aircraft, besides their gliders, that wasn't a lighter-than-air."

"A lighter-than-air?" Shadis cocked an eyebrow. "What the hell is that?"

"It's in the report, sir. A lighter-than-air aircraft is designed to contain within its' structure a certain amount of hydrogen or helium, or even heated air. A gas that is lighter than air. The volume displaces the surrounding ambient air and floats, just as a cork does on the water."

Shadis stared at Erwin in either displeasure or confusion for a few seconds. Erwin couldn't tell, but he almost wanted to laugh at his reaction. The commander sighed heavily and pushed around the documents in his desk. "Fine. I trust you. But if we get bit in the ass by the Military Police, I'm placing full responsibility on you. Not only that, but we'll have to hand them over to the Military Police if they're discovered."

"I understand, sir." Erwin nodded, gathering the reports and files into a neat pile on his commander's desk after Shadis scribbled his signature on a page. "As I said, this may seem like a risk, but the benefits we will reap from these advancements will be beyond compare."

"Hn," Shadis grunted, eyeing Erwin suspiciously. As always, Erwin never gave away his true face and merely saluted Shadis, his report tucked under his arm. "We'll see."

After his salute, Erwin thanked Shadis for meeting with him and exited his office. As he walked through the halls of the Scouting Legion headquarters, he sifted through the report, his eyes scanning over the papers for a specific file. He finally landed on Lyor's file, her picture stapled to the corner of the page.

He ran his thumb over her outdated picture and knit his brows. Six weeks had passed since he had last seen her. He hadn't dared to contact her after she had stormed away from him, believing she needed time to process and to heal. He knew she blamed him for the death of her comrades. He knew it from the way she had glared at him with a thousand fires of hatred. But her father had also told him when he had visited Wilhelm in the hospital. During their encounter with the titans, Wilhelm had suffered a broken leg after falling off of his horse. Six weeks later, he was due to be released from the hospital, Erwin remembered.

With this, he closed the file in his hands and set off to the hospital. There was only one thing missing from Lyor's file: her address.

* * *

Deep within Wall Sina, a cohort of master students sat in a lecture hall at the Sina University. The light from the sunset poured into the hall through the grand windows like melted butter. Hunched over her textbook, Lyor rubbed her temple and frowned. The words coming out of her professor's mouth weren't making any sense. She'd catch the first part of sentence only to find them completely derail in her head — just like when you read a sentence in a book only to find yourself rereading it over and over. This pattern had been present in each of her classes for the past six weeks. Her brain felt like a child's schoolyard game; bouncing incoherently from thought to thought, never landing on one long enough for her to process anything substantial. From her father being in the hospital, Max and Theo's metaphysical funerals, to the very obvious torment that was Faye's disappearance, her brain and mood were dreary.

"If I have to listen to this guy give one more monotone lecture, I'm going to jump off Wall Rose." Her head jerked up from her textbook and sparse notes at the sounds of her classmates' shifting and laughing.

With their lecture ended and their professor running off to teach another class, the students were packing up their books and belongings. How long had she tuned out the lecture? She looked down at her notes and read the two points she had written down for her three hour lecture. She groaned to herself and asked her neighbour if she could borrow her notes. That was the sixth time Lyor had asked her — she was falling behind.

She scrambled to stuff her books and utensils into her shoulder bag and slung the leather bag over her right shoulder as she hastily stood up. She followed her peers down the amphitheatre steps, ready to blindly trail behind them to her next lecture.

"It looks like we're finally at the end of the first semester." Lyor hadn't even noticed someone was walking in step with her down the stairs. Her eyes adjusted Olivia's face, and she slapped on a fraudulent smile.

"Yeah, we should get together to study for our final exams." Lyor replied flatly to the girl.

"Sure, but I'll need my notes back in order to do any studying." Sardonically, her classmate replied. It wasn't unusual for the two of them to be dry with one another; they had been rivals since they started at the university. The rivalry had grown into an odd friendship. The two young women followed the crowd across the lecture hall and towards the exit door.

Lyor sighed and offered an apologetic smile. "Ha-ha, I promise I'll give them back next week, Olivia. I really appreciate your help."

Her classmate narrowed her eyes. "Man, something must be really screwing with you if you're 'appreciating' me. You're not going to drop out, are you?"

"Of course not," Lyor snorted and pushed the door open, holding it open for Olivia as she looked back at her. Lyor flashed a charming smile. "I just haven't been sleeping well lately, that's all. I'll catch up with the help of yourshitty notes."

"Because if you drop out, I don't know what I'll do. You've been my only real competition since you showed up at Sina. You're my pace horse. Without you, I'll get lazy. I'll have frosted hair and dragon lady nails, I'll achieve nothing. I'll become my mother." Ignoring her, Olivia continued her rant, not bothering to hold the door for the people behind her.

"Whatever your say, Olivia." Lyor muttered before she turned her head back to where she was going. Outside in the hall, all of their classmates were walking unusually slow to their next class, hushing whispers amongst themselves.

"Ugh, what now, people?" Olivia shouted, rushing past Lyor and the crowd. "Move it, I've got a class to get to!"

Seeing Olivia productively sifting through the crowd, Lyor called after her. "Hey, wait! Save me a spo—"

"Lyor." Her heart sunk at the sound of a familiar voice. A voice she had demanded herself to forget.

Her eyes widened in dismay. Reluctantly, her head spun slowly around to find him standing across the hall from her classroom's door. Tall, proud, noble — his military uniform suited him.

"Erwin? What're you—" Lyor started before she noticed the abundance of eyes on them. She took a quick scan of her classmates, most of them staring and whispering, before she shook her head. They rarely saw any military individuals here — even less seen were soldiers from the Scouting Legion. She glanced at Erwin one last time before she continued on her way, her hand clutching her bag's strap. "I have a class to get to."

"I have information that concerns you," Erwin insisted, earning bashful whispers from the students who walked by; _isn't that Erwin Smith from the scouts? Is she in trouble?_ Erwin raised his voice effortlessly to bellow. "I strongly suggest that the rest of you get to your classes and out of my sight."

Erwin's threatening tone of voice made her shudder and stop in her tracks. She watched the crowd quake in panic, and they quickly dispersed. She turned around to face him, clenching the strap over her shoulder. She stepped closer to him but kept an impersonal gap between them. Besides the absence of his wounds, he didn't look any different from the last time she had seem him: cold and beautiful calculating eyes, sharp cheekbones, and an immaculate posture. The sight of him made her teeth grind, and she couldn't hold his eye contact for more than a few seconds at a time. All she could think about when she saw him was Faye.

"What do you want?" She snapped.

"I'm here to tell you that my commander has approved an expedition to search for Ms. Wellington." The blond spoke evenly. His blue eyes never faltered from their fix on Lyor's face. He noted how different she looked from when he had met her; long, wavy chestnut hair now released from her former bun, her bangs pinned back away from her face to form the illusion of a half-up hairstyle. Opposite from the pants and practical blouse he had seen her in, she wore a blue dress with a brown leather belt cinching her waist.

Lyor scoffed, meeting his eyes defiantly. "Six weeks later?"

"We leave tomorrow evening." Erwin continued. He watched her shake her head with an incredulous smile.

"Good for you," her response dripped with sarcasm. "I'm sure you'll find her starved corpse in a cave somewhere."

"You don't give her much credit, do you?" Satiated with her attitude, he retorted cooly. Lyor's smile evaporated and her brows knit together dangerously. He watched her knuckles turn white as she squeezed the strap over her shoulder.

"I gave Faye _credit_ and it got her devoured by titans," Lyor replied venomously, hissing the word 'credit'. "Actually, by separating us when the going got rough, _you_ decided that for me. Now unless you have anything else to say, other than your asinine comments, I have places to be."

"The Scouting Legion is prepared to hire your team to carry out your research," Erwin interjected, cruising by her snark. Lyor's mouth dropped open. "You would have known this from the letters and documents I sent you, but assuming you tore those up, I'm here to extend an official offer from the Legion."

Lyor gawked at Erwin, trying to process the doors that were suddenly slammed opened by his proposal. Funded, protected, and military escorted research. No more clandestine workshops, no more smuggling equipment from the underground. They would get paid to build one of mankind's most prodigious advancements. The would have an entire regiment escorting their outings beyond the walls.

"I— how did you…?" Lyor inhaled sharply to regain her composure. Closing her eyes, she pinched the bridge of her nose and paused to think. She met Erwin's gaze once again, determination stretched on her features. "You're the reason for which Max and his son died, for which my father is in the hospital, and the reason for which Faye is missing. I can't accept."

They stood in silence, unflinchingly staring at one another. Lyor envied him for his incorruptible demeanour; his eyes piercing cohesion into her. She knew the squad leader well enough to know that he wouldn't take no for an answer.

"Find Faye," she finally spoke, steadfast. "And I'll mull it over."

She caught a twitch of an uneven smile pull at the corner of Erwin's lip, and he reached his hand out for a handshake. "You have my word."

Wary, Lyor stepped closer to fit her much smaller hand in his. She forced her mind off the warmth and virile strength of his hand as it enveloped hers. They shook hands ceremoniously, and Lyor — not wanting to remain under his gaze — bid him goodbye with a quick nod before walking away. Erwin watched her for a few seconds before he parted in the opposite direction.

The walk to her next class was a blur. She collapsed into one of the classroom chairs and stared blankly at the chalkboard, dazed.

"Bagged yourself a military man, huh?"

Lyor jumped at the sudden appearance of her classmate, Olivia, who sat next to her. Lyor placed a hand on her chest to calm herself. Olivia watched her cheekily. "God, you're like a popup book from hell."

"Who was that?" Olivia urged, shooting past Lyor's comment. Their professor walked in and greeted the class as Lyor took her books out of her bag. "Did you do something illegal?"

"None of your business." Lyor grumbled in response. The professor began the lesson, and Lyor followed along intensely to block out Olivia's stare.

Her mind drifted to Faye yet again, but this time, in her head, Faye was safe and sound. She pictured her safe in a makeshift hideout, a relieved smile on her face as the silhouette of a brave young man dressed in a green cape made his way towards her.

For the first time in weeks, Lyor was able to focus productively throughout the entire class.

* * *

The next day, Lyor returned to her house in the late afternoon from class. She was properly exhausted; all she had done for the past 24 hours was cram for all the weeks she had spaced out in class. But something had been ignited in her, and she didn't want to stop working hard. She would never admit that Erwin's proposal had motivated her.

Lyor reached the front door of her landlady's house, not too far from the university within the walls of Sina. Not having the status or wealth to own a house in Sina, she had been renting one of the widow's bedrooms upstairs. It was a quaint bedroom, and she didn't have much privacy given that the widowed homeowner was a nosy yenta, but Lyor was only there to sleep and study. She regularly visited her father in Wall Rose when she needed to get away.

Lyor dug for her key in her bag, rummaging through the stray papers and books that occupied it. She cursed under her breath when she was left no other choice. She slid the bag off of her shoulder, crouched on the ground and dumped its contents onto the ground. She shuffled through the items as civilians walked by her on the sidewalk.

"… she's frequenting a high-ranking military officer. Mrs. Dietrich told me…"

"… I always wondered how she could afford rent when she comes from Rose… Now we know it's as easy as whoring around with a scout…"

Once she processed that the words were about her, Lyor's head jerked up to see two middle-aged women whispering amongst themselves as they walked by her. Lyor narrowed her eyes at them, and upon making eye contact with the two women, they were silenced. They immediately looked away and sped up their pace to scurry away.

"Man, news travels fast with Mrs. Dietrich." Lyor muttered, rolling her eyes before going back to dig around for her key. She didn't care enough about those strangers to argue with them.

Her hands finally landed on her key only to hear the door handle rattle open on its own.

"What on Earth are you doing on the ground?" Mrs. Dietrich, her landlady, glowered down at her with bitter eyes. Clad in a dark, funereal-like dress, the woman stuck her nose in the air and waited for an answer.

Without moving from her squatted position, Lyor held the key up with a pacifist stare. "Couldn't find my key."

"Honestly, how do you live in such clutter?" The widow scoffed as Lyor gathered her belongings and stuffed them back in her bag without a care. Normally, she would've organised her papers before putting them back in her bag, but the less time she spent in Mrs. Dietrich's presence, the better. Lyor stood, and Mrs. Dietrich led her into the house. "You're lucky I impose a weekly inspection of your room, Ms. Reichart. Otherwise, I'm sure you'd be living in a pigsty!"

"Hn," Lyor closed the door behind her before immediately making her way towards the stairs.

"Have you no manners? I've prepared an afternoon tea for us," The bleak woman ambled about her kitchen, taking a kettle off the stove. "Sit."

Lyor suppressed a displeased sigh before practically crumpling into one of the kitchen table's chairs. She wanted to avoid conflict with the landlady who could kick her out whenever she wanted, but subduing her protests was starting to give her a tension headache.

The young woman watched the widow pour steaming water into an expensive teapot, muttering something about how impolite Lyor was to not offer to help. Lyor drowned it out and averted her eyes, only to have them notice something unusual. Her brows knit when she spotted a brown package with a white envelope on top. The envelope read 'Lyor Reichart' in cursive.

The brunette stood from her seat and walked over to the package and picked up the envelope — it was already torn open.

"How long has this been here?" Lyor asked, bitterly. She turned around to face Mrs. Dietrich who was in mid-pour at the kitchen counter.

Mrs. Dietrich sneered. "It was dropped off by a young Recon Corps officer this morning. I was very inconvenienced by his arrival, I'll have you know. The entire neighbourhood was talking about it! It is the height of impropriety for a woman of your age and status to accept a gift from —"

"Mrs. Dietrich, did you open my mail?" Lyor interrupted her, holding the letter addressed to her up with two fingers. It took all of her self control not to fume at the woman — not only had she started the rumours going around in the neighbourhood, but she had snooped through her mail.

"My eyes are not so good; it is a pain for me to differentiate our letters," Mrs. Dietrich replied, her voice purposefully cracking to inflict guilt on Lyor for becoming agitated. "My dear, I am but an old, widowed woman."

Without a second thought, Lyor gathered the package and letter in her arms, her bag slung over her shoulder, and stomped towards the stairs. She spoke to herself, "Yeah, and you're also a pain in my ass."

Before she could hear if her landlady had heard, Lyor had climbed to the second floor, entered her room, and closed the door behind her. She let out an annoyed sigh and shrugged off her bag. Her room wasn't very big: a single bed, a desk, a wooden dresser, an overflowing bookcase, and a window.

She plopped her bag down beside her desk and placed the brown paper covered package on her desk. She eyed the package curiously as she popped her window open, letting the fresh autumn breeze roll into her bedroom. She sat down at her desk, facing the window, and carefully slid the delicate stationery out of the envelope.

 _For your 'mulling'._

 _Erwin Smith_

She instantly recognised his handwriting without even needing to read his signature. Her thumb unintentionally brushed over his name, and she cursed herself for it. Setting the laconic letter down, she slid the package in front of her. She knew it had to be some sort of book. What kind of bribe had he thought of now?

Lyor forced any feelings of excitement out of her system and peeled back the paper from the gift that waited underneath. She repressed a gasp.

Before her eyes was a first-edition copy of _Dictionnaire Philosophique_ by _Voltaire_. She ran her fingers over the gold encrusted cover, admiring the fine craftsmanship of the binding. She flipped meticulously through the pages, as if one wrong movement would set the book ablaze. Not only was it a first edition, but it wasn't translated from its original language. The book was easily worth over 2,000 gold pieces.

Astounded, she sat all the way back in her chair, staring at the priceless gift upon her desk. She couldn't accept this. Not only was it bribery, but it was overpriced bribery. She chewed on the inside of her cheek, drumming her fingers on her desk as she thought about what to do about Erwin's gift.

His voice suddenly echoed in her head: _We leave tomorrow evening_.

She bolted from her desk, grabbing what she needed for the long ferry-ride she had ahead of her to Wall Maria. With Erwin's gift under her arm, she scampered out of her room and down the stairs.

* * *

A crowd of civilians gathered around the Survey Corps' troops as they lined up in formation before Wall Maria's gate. Criticisms and crude commentary were exchanged through whispers and scoffs. At this point, and after so long, Erwin didn't even realise people were talking about them. He sat proudly and passively on his white stallion, directly behind his commander with his squad members following behind him. They stood idly as they waited for the gates to be opened, the Garrison troops clearing the way for them outside the walls.

Erwin ran through the strategy briefing in his head yet another time, visualising the area they were heading to. The image of a battered, skeletal corpse flashed in his mind as Lyor's words polluted him: _I'm sure you'll find her starved corpse in a cave somewhere._ It was indeed a very possible option, but Erwin exhaled the thought out of his head. He wondered when or why he had started listening to other people's doubts. One person's doubts in particular.

He began to scan the crowd in order to distract himself from his thoughts, drinking in the looks of disdain and disapproval. _Waste of taxes, green devils, wings of failure._ He'd heard them all. However, his eyebrows raised at the sight of a familiar face standing out in the crowd.

Lyor: her wavy locks flowing past her shoulders and her amber eyes locked on his blue ones. He couldn't decipher her expression, but he recognised the book she held close to her chest. He almost chuckled to himself, wondering what the hell she was doing here. As soon as their eyes had met, he watched her advance from the crowd — she was coming to speak with him. He stole a glance at the Garrison guards up on the gates. He had a few minutes to spare.

Erwin dismounted, earning questioning looks from his fellow soldiers, but his eyes were focused on the young woman who exited the crowd to come join him. He suddenly felt an unfamiliar emotion as she walked over to him. Though she certainly wasn't here to bid him anything whatsoever, he couldn't help but feel as if she was seeing him off. The experience was foreign to him, but he couldn't hide the fact that he enjoyed it — he specifically enjoyed that she would be the last person he'd see before he departed.

"It's my turn to ask you what you're doing here." Once she reached him, Erwin couldn't help the childlike smirk on his face as he greeted her. She was wearing the same blue dress he had seen her in the day before.

Lyor seemed to stare at him as if she had just realised something. She replied slowly. His eyes fixated on her pink lips as she spoke without him knowing it. "I originally came here to reject your gift, but I just realised you have nowhere to store this book."

He chuckled, his hands loosely around his horse's dangling reins. "Then you'll just have to keep it." He had almost wanted to tell her she hadn't come to return his book, but to see him, rather. He wasn't blind. But he kept his cockiness to himself.

"Erwin, I can't accept this. I'll skip straight past the bribery issue to tell you that our original deal was for you to bring Faye back. That's all." Lyor never broke their eye contact.

"You're right; this has nothing to do with our deal," Erwin replied cooly. "I simply thought you could use a good read to exercise your mind while you contemplated my offer. No bribes."

Lyor let out a breathless laugh. "How is this not a bribe? How much did you spend on this?"

"I didn't spend a single penny on it."

"You stole it?"

Erwin had to suppress himself from bursting into laughter. "Do I look like a thief?"

He watched her cheeks flush a light pink before she averted her eyes in annoyance. "Well what else am I supposed to infer from that?"

"That used to be my book. I'm giving it to you; you said you didn't have any copies of Voltaire." Erwin spelled it out for her just as the Garrison guards alerted the troops of their imminent departure with sonorous bells. The blond didn't get a chance to see Lyor's reaction as he swiftly returned to his horse and mounted. She followed him, and he looked down at her. She was smiling up at him, a mix of mischief and amusement in her eyes.

"You're not very good at bribery." She commented.

"That's because I don't bribe," He offered her an intimidating smirk. "I blackmail."

He caught her face turning red for a split second with something other than embarrassment this time. The bells continued to ring over their staring contest until she finally spoke.

"Good luck out there."

"Thank you." Erwin replied, his blue eyes pouring intensely into her honey ones. _I'll find her,_ he meant to tell her with his gaze. A small smile pulled at her lips at this. With a nod, she took a few steps backwards before she finally broke their powerful gaze and turned her back to him to rejoin the crowd. The jangling of the gate opening sounded throughout the street, and Erwin steeled himself, ready to follow his commander's instructions.

Within minutes, the gate was open, and Shadis raised his arm. Upon his signal, the troops broke into a gallop at the command to advance. They poured through the gates, group by group. Erwin stole a small glance at Lyor before she left his sight; she was watching him. He smiled knowingly to himself: he had lied to her.

Six weeks ago, that pleasant afternoon they had spent together reading Rousseau in the forest, she had admitted to him that she had always wanted to own a book by Voltaire. For six weeks, he had been asphyxiated with guilt over the death of her friends. For six weeks, he had replayed the sight of the hatred in her eyes — directed at him. He couldn't stand it. He wanted to see her happy again. The book he had given her wasn't a hand-me-down. He had spent an entire month's salary on it the moment he had laid eyes on it: he wanted to be the reason she was happy again.


	7. Chapter 7: Rain Check

Two weeks passed before Lyor first received the news of Faye's safe return. She had been at her father's house for the winter break, and she had nearly fallen over when they opened the letter.

Wilhelm and his daughter sat across from each other in the carriage on their way to Faye's hospital. With a bouquet of yellow crocuses in her lap, Lyor quietly peered from the carriage's window as the bumpy road rocked her. She watched the hospital building approach expectantly.

This was their fourth visit so far. Each visit had proved more fruitful than the last with Faye's quasi skeletal appearance dwindling each time they saw her. Lyor's guilt never lessened though. The young girl seemed so vulnerable and troubled in her hospital bed. Faye would never admit it, but Lyor knew she was traumatised. After being left alone outside the walls for nearly six weeks, who wouldn't?

When Faye was well enough to accept visitors, she had told her group mates how she survived: a hollowed out tree trunk, plantain leaves, and a near-by stream for drinking water. For those long, lonely weeks, Faye had eaten only plantain leaves, and remained glued inside the shelter of the hollowed out tree. Occasionally, she was able to spear a fish in the stream if she was feeling particularly courageous. She had admitted to herself early on that there was no way she could make it back to the walls alone, so she waited patiently for help to arrive, away from the titans' eyes. In the moment, Lyor had been taken aback by the girl's wisdom, but after some time she realised it wasn't so surprising coming from the child prodigy that was Faye.

The teen had described her rescue to the best of her recollection — she had been so relieved to be rescued that exhaustion and malnutrition had finally imposed themselves on her, and she had soon found herself unconscious. But what she did remember was witnessing the deaths of several scouts on their way back to the walls — a titan had chased them home. Lyor had refrained from asking if a blond man had been amongst those soldiers.

"You look perplexed."

Lyor's eyes moved from the window to her father. She shrugged.

"I'm anxious to see Faye." Lyor replied, her eyes dropping to the flowers on her lap as she played with the white ribbon keeping the stems together.

Her father watched her mutely. He knew his daughter well enough to see through her mask. "It's not your fault she got left behind."

Lyor inhaled deeply. "I convinced her to work with us. It may be indirect, but it's still my fault that she was out there."

"So what? I bought the last loaf of bread the other day at the bakery, which means a starving child wasn't able to steal bread that day. Maybe he's dead now, and it's indirectly my fault," Wilhelm's reply made Lyor look up from her hands, her face pulled into a frown. Wilhelm held her gaze steadily. "That kind of thinking is destructive — don't sabotage your decisions based on guilt. Faye made her decision when she accepted to work with us, and when she insisted on accompanying us outside the walls. Accept what is out of your control."

Lyor chewed on the inside of her cheek, her eyes acquiescently returning to her lap. She grumbled. "You sound just like mom."

Wilhelm's lips pulled into a smile. "I'll take that as a compliment." Wilhelm squared his shoulders before he continued, his smile fading. "Now, we haven't talked about the Scouting Legion since Faye's return. I've talked to Rick and Heinrich, and they've agreed to sign the contract. I want to know if you still think it's the right call."

Lyor blinked, surprised that her father placed so much importance on her approval. After some thought, Lyor nodded. "It's the only way to keep our cause alive."

The two of them spent the rest of the carriage ride chit-chatting; from the future of their group to Faye's recovery. When they arrived, they both stepped out of the carriage and walked into the hospital. Wilhelm was speaking to the nurse at the front desk, who gave them permission to make their way to Faye's room, when Lyor spotted a familiar face round the corner of the hallway. He looked irritated, to say the least.

Upon his blue eyes meeting hers, the man marched over. She noticed the teddy bear in his hands and raised an eyebrow. Once he reached the woman and her father, he ran a hand through his brown hair, seemingly to calm himself down.

Lyor pointed to the stuffed animal in his hand sarcastically. "Hi, Rick. Nice teddy bear. What're you going to name it?"

Rick rolled his eyes, his jaw twitching in irritation under his beard. "Faye's parents are here… They all but decapitated me when they saw me knocking at the door."

"So a full grown man ran away from a teenager's scorned parents?" Wilhelm sneered.

"I didn't come here to be screamed at," Rick pushed the stuffed animal into Wilhelm's chest, his voice coated in annoyance. The older man took it into his hands. "In order to come with us, the little brat snuck out without them knowing. If you manage to get past the door, tell her this is from me. I'm done."

With a huff and a wave, the broad man bid the two goodbye. Lyor and Wilhelm shared an uncertain look between them.

"Well, if anyone has to face them, it's me." Wilhelm commented, tucking the bear under his arm as they steeled themselves for the walk to Faye's room.

They walked in silence through the marble-floored corridors, the heel of Lyor's boots clicking and echoing off the pristine walls. They found themselves before the wooden door within minutes, and Lyor took a deep breath as her father knocked before opening the door. Inside was a middle-aged woman — her eyes sunken and framed by dark bags. She bore a slight resemblance to Faye. A man of similar age sat beside her at Faye's bedside while the young girl slept, a hand on his daughter's arm and his face riddled with worry. His wife's brows instantly knit as her eyes set on the pair.

"How many of you are there?! You shouldn't have come here! Get out!" Her face twisted in anger, and she stood from her seat to approach Wilhelm at a frightening pace. "It's not enough to send my daughter to her death but you also have to come here to pester her?!"

Lyor opened her mouth to respond, her eyes apologetic and heartfelt, but her father held out his arm and spoke to her over his shoulder. "It's best if you wait outside."

Before she could say anything, Wilhelm stepped into the room and closed the door gently behind him. Albeit muffled, she heard him murmur something softly to the woman through the door only to be replied to with a roar of wrath. Lyor sighed to herself in the hallway as their conversations continued in the same pattern.

She brought Faye's bouquet to her chest, holding it close to her as she looked around the hallway to spot a bench across the way. She walked over to it and took a seat, quietly trying to translate the muffled argument coming from Faye's room. A few minutes passed this way as she idly twirled the bouquet of flowers in her hands. What made her look up from her hands was the sound of footsteps clicking down the hallway.

Her heart skipped a beat upon recognising the man who strolled down the hall, a brown haired woman to his right. He was wearing civilian clothes: a white button up tucked into his black trousers underneath a casual jacket. She would never admit to herself that she was relieved to see Erwin safe.

She took the time to curiously eye the woman he was with before she was spotted. She was around his age, her unruly hair pulled into a ponytail, and a pair of oval spectacles upon her nose. Her brown eyes met Lyor's before Erwin followed the woman's gaze. Lyor stood from her bench, a small, polite smile on her lips as the two approached her. Both the woman and Erwin returned her smile.

"Hi there," Lyor greeted them, standing before the two taller adults.

Erwin's gaze seemed to soften for half a second. "Hello, Lyor. It's nice to see you." He expressed.

Her eyes poured into his and she replied, her voice as soft as his gaze. "It's nice to see you, too." He broke their eye contact as if breaking from a trance in order to turn to the woman beside him.

"This is my colleague, Hanji Zoë. She is one of the Recon Corps' lead researchers, and also one of the soldiers who rescued Faye," The blond stated. Lyor smiled and held out her free hand. "Hanji, this is Lyor Reichart; Wilhelm's daughter."

"You're Lyor?!" Hanji took her hand enthusiastically with both of hers, her eyes sparkling as a wide grin spread on her face. Lyor blinked in confusion. "Wow, I didn't picture you like this at all! Erwin told me all about your codex on the flight of birds… I have so many questions! I tried to ask Faye, but she said she hasn't even read it yet! You have to let me borrow it!"

"Hanji…" Erwin warned.

Pleasantly surprised by her intensity and warmth, Lyor returned her grin and squeezed the woman's hand, ignoring Erwin's disapproval. The world wouldn't be an interesting place without people like Hanji.

"It's not quite finished, but I promise you'll be the first person to read it when it is. Consider it a gift for bringing Faye back." Lyor responded, and Hanji laughed heartily before letting go. She spoke before Hanji could twitter about anything else. "Are you two here to see Faye?"

"Yes, we try to bring her some real food on our day off. I wouldn't even feed this hospital's food to a titan!" The woman remarked as she gestured to the package in Erwin's hand. Erwin chuckled, and Lyor savoured the sound after not hearing it for several weeks.

"How sweet of you." Lyor commented, smiling at her, but her smile didn't last long when she heard the muffled sound of something smashing from inside Faye's room followed by more screaming. Automatically, Hanji and Erwin, both being military officers, twitched in response, their shoulders now square and defensive. Lyor could tell by their movements that they had both received the same military training. She held her hand up in appeasement, a hesitant smile on her face.

"Now may not be the best time to visit. We just learned that Faye had snuck out of her house to come outside the walls with us. We had no idea her parents didn't know… And now that she barely made it home alive, they're blaming my father. He's trying to defuse the situation."

"Sounds like he's doing a good job." Hanji replied sarcastically.

"Hell hath no fury like a _mother_ scorned, Hanji." Lyor offered, earning a laugh from Hanji and another chuckle from Erwin. She turned her attention to the eventful door beside them, hiding her giddy smile. She liked making him laugh.

Before their conversation could progress any further, Faye's door swung open, her mother on the other side. "You're just a monster! Exploiting a teenage girl! I'm going to report you to the King, and then we'll see how sorry you really are, you scum! Now, get out!"

The mother violently motioned Wilhelm, who was still inside the room, towards the hallway. After opening the door, Lyor must've caught her attention for she turned savagely towards the young woman.

"And _you_!" Faye's mother pointed at the brunette, stepping out of the room to shove her index in Lyor's face. Lyor tried to back away defensively, but the woman followed her. "You abused your influence as Faye's upperclassman to get her to join! I'm going to denounce you to the university and have you stripped of your degree! You're nothing but a depraved trollop! Go back to your rat hole, you damned bit-"

Lyor watched as Erwin seized the woman's defamatory finger in his imposing hand, and lowered it from Lyor's face. "That's quite enough, ma'am." His voice was firm and domineering; it made Lyor's skin prickle.

The woman seemed to blanch at Erwin's demand, but she quickly snapped her hand away and regained her composure — although she refrained from raising her voice to her previous decibel level. "Just what my daughter needs: humanity's greatest tax money waste visiting her. Just leave her alone!"

The mother stomped back to her daughter's room, and after confirming she had successfully kicked Wilhelm out, she slammed the door behind her with a furious glare.

"Well," Hanji cooly broke the awkward silence that filled the hallway between the four of them. "I guess Faye won't be joining the Scouting Legion anytime soon."

They exchanged a disarming laugh, and Wilhelm introduced himself to Hanji. Erwin turned to Lyor when she spoke to him over Hanji's squeaks of excitement. "Let me take that for you."

He watched her take the bundled package of food that was in his hands, and he revelled in how calm she was after just being vituperated by a stranger. She gathered Erwin and Hanji's package, Rick's stuffed animal, and her bouquet into a pile as Hanji and her father conversed, and neatly placed it beside Faye's door.

"Shall we?" Lyor turned to Erwin, and he nodded.

The foursome made their way down the halls and to the hospital's main entrance, Hanji and Lyor's father deeply engaged in a discussion about something regarding a chemical oxidation process. Outside the hospital, Lyor and Erwin listened quietly, both amused by the strange friendship blooming before them.

"Well, why don't we go out for an afternoon drink to finalise our contract?" Wilhelm proposed, the four of them facing each other. Hanji and Erwin exchanged a glance before nodding, Hanji more enthusiastically than the blond.

"That sounds great! I know a great bar in this area!" Hanji exclaimed, dragging the older scientist along with her before diving right back into their previous debate about something Lyor could only guess was chemistry. Erwin began to follow them until he realised Lyor didn't move from her spot.

"You're not coming?" He asked, stopping to turn and face her inquisitively.

Lyor offered him a humble smile. "No, I have to go home — my final semester starts tomorrow. I have to pack and return to Sina tonight. But, please, go enjoy yourself."

"Allow me to walk you home; it'll be hard for you to get a carriage at this busy hour. Do you live in the area?"

Lyor hesitated, suppressing a bashful grin. "I'd hate to separate you from them."

"Nonsense. I know exactly where Hanji's taking him; she's got a go-to bar to talk people's ears off." He argued with a smirk. Lyor pondered for a few moments before she nodded and began to lead the way with a small smile.

They fell in step together, a comfortable silence falling between them as they walked through the cobblestone streets. The two of them maintained a chaste distance from one another. The sky was basked in pink and purple from of the setting autumn sun, being that it was nearly sundown, and it gave a peaceful quality to the bustling area of Wall Rose. Merchants were packing up their markets for the day, mothers beckoned their children to set the dinner table, and men were returning home from their long day of work. Lyor enjoyed this time of day; all felt tranquil for those few hours.

She eyed Erwin in her peripheral vision as they walked, and she finally mustered the strength to finally blurt what had been floating in her head.

"Faye told me about the four soldiers who died rescuing her," Erwin looked at her. "I'm sorry about your comrades. I also want to apologise for behaving the way I did when you brought me back to the walls. I was a perfect ass." Lyor attempted a remorseful glance to the tall man to her left. He was smiling calmly, but the smile never quite reached his enigmatic eyes.

"Apology accepted." He responded, his voice deep and as smooth as always. He caught the sound of Lyor releasing a relieved breath. "How was the book?"

Lyor looked at him again but this time she wore an amused expression. "You think I finished that monster of a book in three weeks?"

"Of course not," He then smirked. "Six days?" Lyor held his gaze challengingly, her devious smile only making him smile wider and vice versa. "Five?"

"Four. Nearly failed my final exams."

Erwin feigned exasperation, and Lyor couldn't repress a giggle. "I seem to constantly underestimate you."

"I found the passage on whether or not humility is a virtue fascinating. I never thought of it as being the 'antidote to pride'," Lyor continued to answer his previous question, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. "And then he goes on to describe Descartes' different types of humility… What were they again?" She mumbled to herself, not expecting an answer from Erwin.

"Virtuous and vicious humility." He completed her thought, and she gawked at him in excitement.

"Who the hell writes a single line about it and moves on to the next topic without citing anything?! I wasted an entire eight hours looking for Descartes' book at the library! The librarians thought I was crazy." Lyor exclaimed, and the way her tone of voice expressed her annoyance made Erwin laugh heartily. The image in his head of her slumped at a desk, appearance bedraggled, and grumbling incoherently to herself didn't help either.

"It's not funny! I thought I was losing my mind." Lyor defended herself but Erwin's laughter was contagious.

"Ah, then I'm sure Voltaire would be very proud of himself," He commented, and the two of them exchanged a smile before focusing on the busy street before them. "What did you think of his passage on instincts?"

The two adults continued their walk absorbed in conversation. Subject after subject, they traded perspectives and bartered arguments — all amidst laughs. It was the fastest half hour walk of Lyor's life. Though they didn't necessarily agree on everything, she had to admit that his arguments were based on solid foundations, and she quickly found herself respecting him and his intellect. Not knowing whether or not he would agree with her, or what he would say, excited her. But when they did agree, they both felt an indefinable growth of camaraderie between them. And in those moments, she didn't notice him watching her; not as a man who looks at a friend, but as a man who looks at a woman.

They found themselves in front of the main door of her father's house, and Lyor paused as she eyed the doorknob, having left the front door unlocked.

"I'd invite you in for a cup of coffee, but I'm afraid I won't make very good company. I have to start packing now or I'll miss my ferry." Lyor turned to face Erwin, unable to suppress a disappointed smile.

"I'll take a rain check." Erwin replied simply, returning her smile but hiding any sign of disappointment. He offered her another smile to bid her goodbye and began walking away.

"Wait," She stood at her door, and he watched her hands fidget, deep in thought, before she lifted her eyes to meet his unflinchingly. The depth of her eyes swallowed him whole, and he refused to acknowledge the skip in his heartbeat. "I haven't thanked you for finding Faye. I'm not sure how I'll ever repay you."

He chuckled. "Come work for us."

Lyor blinked before she breathed out a scoff. "That's already a given. All that's left for us to do is dot the i's and cross the t's."

" _And_ have that cup of coffee with me some day."

She returned his chuckle. "You saved someone's life, and for your bravery, I offer you coffee. That seems fair to me, too."

With a chortle and a wave goodbye, he turned on his heel and began walking in the direction they had come from. "Good luck with your classes."

Lyor, with a leftover smile, let herself watch the blond man walk for a bit before she let herself in. Closing the door behind her, she leaned her weight on it with her back and let her eyes go out of focus as she stared at the floor. Her heart fluttered happily. She wondered if there had been any double meaning behind his words. She flushed at the idea, but deemed it impossible before she shook it out of her mind and went on with her day.

Erwin smiled to himself the whole way back.

"You're fifteen minutes late!" Rick hollered from the wagon as he watched the brunette skitter down the stairs of the hospital. She hurdled into the carriage, slamming the door behind her inelegantly, and the immediately man ordered the driver to step on it. She collapsed in the carriage bench across from Rick and wheezed out a sigh.

"Sorry; I had to wait for Faye's parents to leave before I could visit her." Lyor barely had enough oxygen in her lungs to speak.

Rick rolled his eyes and grumbled something under his breath as she fixed herself up; smoothing down her dress shirt and pulling up her pants that had almost fallen down her ass from sprinting through hallways without a belt. "That's what you're wearing to meet the commander of the Survey Corps?"

Lyor frowned. "And what's wrong with what I'm wearing?"

"I don't know," Rick ambiguously gestured to her clothes, a grimace on his features. "Shouldn't you be wearing a dress or something?"

The younger woman guffawed. "I don't know, Rick. Shouldn't you be jumping off a cliff or something?"

As the carriage took them across the district, the two ended their bickering in a truce and quietly watched the scenery from the windows. They were on their way to the Scouting Legion's headquarters deep within the countryside of Wall Rose. Lyor had already visited the grounds when she and her father had dropped off their signed contracts a few weeks ago, but she had yet to meet commander Shadis and the military police brigadier general who was in charge of their project supervision.

As stipulated in their contracts, the group of engineers had been permitted to carry out their research but only under specific conditions. One, the engineers must complete and store all their work at the scouts' headquarters. Two, all experiments must be escorted and documented by military personnel, then immediately relayed to the MP. Three, a weekly project inspection must be completed by military police officers, supervised and directly reporting to one brigadier general of the interior police, Markus Schoenberg. No one in their group had ever heard of or met the officer, and being drowned in midterm projects, Lyor hadn't had the time to ask about him.

Lyor recognised the surroundings as they pulled onto the path leading to the Survey Corps' castle headquarters. The carriage stopped, and the two engineers stepped out of the wagon to find themselves past the castle gates and near the stables. A Scouting Legion officer waited for them as they exited, and he asked them to follow him to Shadis' offices after pointing out that they were late. A few recruits stole glances at the two civilians as they made their way through the intimidating halls, but Lyor tried to copy Rick's nonchalance and pretended not to notice.

After climbing two sets of stairs and walking down a long hallway, the soldier stopped in front of a wooden door and knocked. Feeling a little bit insecure after seeing Rick — who normally couldn't care less about his appearance — tidy himself up, Lyor took the opportunity to take out the hairpin from her bun and quickly brushed through her wavy locks with her fingers, letting her hair loose.

"Come in."

The soldier opened the door to reveal a large room with several people gathered around a coffee table; some on chairs, some on couches. She recognised Heinrich and her father who sat on the couch with a cup of coffee in front of them, but a few unfamiliar faces scrutinised her and Rick. She was surprised at Erwin's absence. The soldier saluted who Lyor could only assume was Shadis, and motioned for the two engineers to enter the room. The door was closed behind them as the soldier exited. Wilhelm shot Lyor and Rick a disgruntled look.

An intimidating military man with sunken eyes and a head of short brown hair eyed the two heavily, standing behind his desk with both of his hands strictly folded behind his back. "Did you misunderstand when I said we would be meeting at 1500 hours?"

Lyor swallowed when Rick didn't seem phased by the man's words. "E-erm, no, sir. I'm sorry. It won't happen again."

"That's right, for your sake, it will not happen again," Shadis warned. "I do not and will not tolerate such disrespect in my— "

"Keith, Keith! Give them a break!"

Everyone's attention turned to the military man who spoke out, sitting on the couch across from Heinrich and Wilhelm, his deep voice booming. Lyor watched the tall man, in his late thirties, unfold from his seat and stand to his full height; shoulders broad, chocolate locks slicked back, and a chiseled jaw powdered by a trimmed beard. He wore a long, leather uniform coat with the Military Police's insignia on the breast pocket. His green eyes fell on Rick, and he walked over to him, holding out his hand. "They're not soldiers! Greet them properly, for God's sake."

Rick — being reluctant to this whole partnership with the military ordeal — gingerly took the man's hand and shook it.

"Markus Schoenberg, at your service." The military man flashed a charming smile, his canines sharper than any Lyor had ever seen.

"Rick." He replied bluntly, purposefully omitting his last name to show his dissatisfaction.

"I don't care if they're not soldiers. By extension, they are part of the Scouts and they need to learn to act like it." The commander snarled, taking a seat at his desk.

Markus' stare moved from Rick to Lyor, and she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand as his eyes pierced through hers, a sharp smile on his face. Nobody but her had noticed that the look in his eyes was not at all the same. Nervously, but diplomatically, she held out her hand to shake his as he walked over to her, but instead, Markus took her hand in his and brought it to his lips, his eyes never leaving hers. Whether he kissed her hand out of chivalry or not, she couldn't tell.

"You must be Wilhelm's daughter," he spoke, his lips brushing against her skin as he spoke. "Lyor Reichart."

She cleared her throat and retracted her hand from his rather peeved, but she bowed her head respectfully. She grit her teeth into what could pass as a smile, and spoke through her teeth, "It's a pleasure to meet you, brigadier general."

She witnessed an emotion unbeknownst to her flicker in his eyes at her defiance.

"Alright, that's enough. I don't have all day. Take a seat," Shadis interrupted, and Markus smiled airily at her before regaining his seat, completely dissipating any of his previous aggressiveness. Rick and Lyor sat on the closest chairs, facing the commander across the room over the coffee table. "I've gathered you here today to go over the expectations of this partnership."

Shadis then went on to reiterate what Lyor had read in her contract, but he ad libbed a few rules: mandatory participation in physical training four times a week, abiding by military rules if chosen to stay in the barracks — AKA mandatory 0500 hours wake up and 2200 hours curfew — and some adjustment to their compensation method. Otherwise, they were considered civilians and were expected to "act accordingly".

They were to directly report to the fourth squad leader, Augie Hills, who was in charge of their assigned squad, and to Markus Schoenberg, brigadier general of the interior police, when required and during weekly inspections. Augie, who sat beside Markus, was a middle-aged woman with tight traits from stress, but otherwise she looked quite pleasant to Lyor — an honest face and bright hazel eyes. After Augie shook hands with the new additions to her squad, Shadis ended his articulation.

"I will ignore any weak first impressions," Shadis punctuated by staring at Rick and Lyor across the way. Lyor stared at her feet. "And I welcome you to the Scouting Legion. I've called an assembly in the courtyard to introduce you to your colleagues."

With this, Shadis stood and everyone followed suit, the engineers falling back a bit as Wilhelm scorned Rick and Lyor for their tardiness, away from the commander's ears. The commander led the way down the hall and a flight of stairs, his walk brisk and aggressive, and the squad leader opened a set of doors that led to a raised wooden platform. The group stepped onto the scaffold as Shadis barked at his men to stand at attention. Lyor couldn't help but laugh to herself at the way she jumped at his command, but her smile soon vanished when she realised that they stood before the entire regiment.

"Men, before you are the newest additions of engineers to squad four. For better or for worse, they are to be treated as your colleagues and nothing less. Our partnership has been finalised and is effective immediately. Salute!" Shadis bellowed, and Lyor watched 150 soldiers salute, the sound of their fists colliding over their hearts sounding in unison. She spotted Erwin in the front row — his hair neater than the last time she had seen him, and his traits solemn. She admired how noble and tall he looked saluting; like the perfect knight.

Before she knew it, Shadis ended his speech and dismissed his soldiers. Each engineer shook his hand before parting ways, and Augie led the group to her squad before excusing herself to a meeting. To Lyor's surprise, she found Hanji waiting for them with seven other soldiers. The brunette happily greeted Lyor and her father after they had stepped off the scaffold, and introduced herself to Heinrich and Rick.

"Meet the guys! You've got Rashad, Moblit, Nifa, Keiji, and Abel." Hanji spoke, and each member acknowledged the group in their own ways; some smiled, waved, or grunted. They started chatting easily amongst themselves before Hanji proposed to show the group the squad's workstations. Being the research and development squad, Lyor was excited to see what kind of equipment they had.

But her excitement was interrupted when she was cut off by someone towering over her; his build athletic and tall. She watched her group walk away, too busy making acquaintances to notice that she wasn't following. Finally, she looked up to meet brigadier Schoenberg's scrutinising eyes.

"I'm sorry to isolate you from your group like this, Ms. Reichart," Markus spoke, his vixenish voice contradicting the innocent smile that stretched across his face. "I just felt the need to apologise to you for flustering you earlier."

Lyor blinked before she held back a scoff, out of respect for his high rank. She didn't want to start trouble this early on. "You didn't fluster me." She simply replied, matter of factly.

"Well, then, you seemed displeased by my greeting," he offered, his eyes drinking in her every expression. She suddenly felt suffocated by his presence. Her malaise only fed his smirk. "I only meant to greet a lady like a proper gentleman."

Lyor offered a disarming smile in order to alleviate her discomfort, and to trick him into thinking she wasn't phased by him. "You mistook my reaction. I assure you I was not displeased. Now, I'm sorry, but my squad has nearly disappeared, and I don't know my way around here."

"Oh, please," The officer cooed and offered her his arm. "Let me escort you. I know the grounds like the back of my hand."

Lyor swallowed the uneasiness in her throat and eyed his leather coated arm. If she declined, she wasn't sure how her immediate superior would take it. With an artificial smile and a disconcerted inhale, she timidly took his arm and he began to walk her towards her squad's station, striking a conversation as they made their way down the dirt path.

From a few feet away, Erwin stood with Mike and another squad member. The latter was occupied with a document, discussing its content with Mike, their backs turned to the walking couple, but Erwin had a clear view of Lyor over Mike's shoulder. His icy blue eyes glared daggers into Markus' back as he watched the couple disappear from his sight as they rounded a corner. He noticed how Lyor had tried to hide her distress. Despite his perfect mask of indifference, he felt his eyebrow twitch.

For the first time in a long time, Erwin felt — in the truest sense of the word — uneasy.

* * *

A/N: LEAVE ME SOME COMMENTS BROS!

Sorry this chapter was so uneventful, but I needed an entire chapter to set the foundations for the rollercoaster that awaits y'all. 3-3 Thoughts on Schoenberg?


	8. Chapter 8: Seed

The sharp sound of a small explosion cracked through the air, interrupting the concentrated silence of the work space. Hanji, Moblit, Nifa, Rashad and Lyor practically jumped out of their stools at the sudden blast, and they peered across the squad's laboratory, in the direction of the sound. Rick emerged from underneath an engine, his face covered in black soot, to stare back at his coworkers.

"… and that's lunch." Rick declared, wiping his face with his work apron. Nifa laughed at him, closing up her books to bring him a clean rag. Hanji looked at her watch.

"It's already 1:30?" She commented. Hanji stretched out her limbs, groaning, as the rest of her squad began to pack up their workstations. "Time to eat."

"Oh, thank god. I'm starving." Rashad rolled out his shoulders and winced at the foul sounds of his joints popping.

The squad cleaned up their work space before gathering outside in the hallway, Hanji locking the door behind them. As a group, the six of them made their way to the mess hall, pleasantly engaged in casual conversation. They each retrieved a tray and were served their meals: mashed potatoes, carrots, and fish.

Lyor took a seat beside Nifa, who sat beside Rashad, at one of the mess hall tables, while the other three sat across from them. They ate and conversed, laughing at another one of Hanji's anecdotes.

"Where are Keiji and Abel? I haven't seen them since last week." Rick finally asked, downing his glass of water.

"Abel's stuck training the new recruits this week and next. Keiji got caught past curfew so he's been pulling stable duty." Moblit explained as he pulled apart his bread.

"Idiot." Rashad grunted.

"It's not like we've seen much of your tribe either. Wilhelm and Heinrich haven't been around much." Nifa added, raising an eyebrow at Rick.

"Oh, come on, we're all a tribe now, Nifa." Hanji interjected. The smaller girl grinned in response.

"My father can only work on his days off, which have been getting rarer and rarer, and I heard Heinrich's granddaughter is in town. Isn't that right, Rick?" Dipping her bread into her gravy, Lyor answered Hanji. Rick nodded.

"Well, it's nice of you to finally join us full time now that you're out of school," The brunette smirked at Lyor. Hanji whispered, covering her mouth from the man sitting beside her. "Rick was starting to miss you."

The dark haired man scoffed, and before he could comment, Lyor spoke, laughing.

"Actually, that reminds me. My graduation ceremony is this weekend," She rummaged through her bag that she had placed on the empty chair beside her, and pulled out a piece of paper. She slid it across the table to her friends. Upon showing them the flyer for the ceremony, Lyor suddenly felt a bit embarrassed; though she had grown quite close to her teammates these past few months, she wasn't sure if they were close enough to invite them to a celebration quite yet. "You're, uhm, all welcome to come. If you have the day off, that is."

Their reactions brought her instant relief. "Yes! I have Saturday off!" Hanji chimed.

Moblit offered her an apologetic smile. "I'm afraid I have to miss it — I've got horse training all day." Lyor dismissed his apology, letting him know it wasn't a big deal.

"Me, too, Lyor," Nifa expressed with remorse, but she seemed to perk up as a thought entered her head. "But why don't we go out that evening to celebrate? We've all got extended curfew that night. We could also celebrate Hanji's promotion to squad leader while we're at it!"

"Hey, that's right! How come none of you have taken me out yet? Ungrateful subordinates!" Hanji huffed, pounding her fist on the table.

"Because you refuse to be taken out anywhere but to Bricks." Moblit muttered, disgruntled. This placed a look of resolution on Hanji's face.

"Brix's Bricks!" Hanji proudly shot her glass of water in the air, spilling some on Moblit, who repressed a grumble.

"Why're you saying it twice?" Nifa scoffed.

"That's the full name of the bar!" Replied Hanji.

"Brix's Bricks? I never knew that."

"It's repetitive." Lyor added, taking the last bite of her meal.

Rashad replied. "And redundant."

"It's repetitive."

"And redundant."

"We certainly are entertaining, sir." Lyor spoke in a haughty accent.

"Indubitably, madam." Rashad punctuated, mirroring her accent.

"Come on, you guys! It'll be fun!" Hanji whined, a pleading look in her eyes.

"Hey, I'd never pass up an opportunity to drink." Rick spoke, and Rashad nodded in agreement. Lyor, being finished with her meal, packed up her belongings as Rashad and Nifa bickered, the younger girl having accused him of being an alcoholic.

Lyor stood and tucked her chair into the table. "Great. I'll see you all on Saturday, then. I have to run — I have to finish moving my stuff back to my father's house today."

"Oh, since his office is on your way out, can you drop this off to Erwin for me?" Hanji asked her, pulling out a multi-paged report from the inside of her uniform coat. She flashed the engineer a guilty smile. "I have to go straight to Schoenberg's project inspection after lunch, and I promised I'd have it to him by three o'clock."

Lyor took the report from her and smirked. "I can't exactly say no, now that you're my boss, can I?"

Hanji blinked at her before her face broke out into a huge grin, and Lyor heard her exclaim as she walked out of the mess hall. "And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how to be a proper underling!"

As she made her way down the hallways, Lyor found herself happy to have an excuse to see Erwin. The pair's friendship had blossomed over the several months she had worked there; they often spent time catching up when they saw each other, and now that Hanji held the same rank as he, it wasn't completely abnormal for him to sit with them in the mess hall now and again during meals. In fact, Lyor didn't even mind the strange looks they got when she had lunch with him alone — although those instances were rare. However, with some sort of recruiting ordeal unfolding, she hadn't seen Erwin in several days. She had meant to return his first edition Voltaire to him, which she pulled out of her bag during her walk. She was still oblivious to the fact that Erwin had bought it for her.

This visit also gave her the perfect excuse to invite him to her graduation, and her heart fluttered excitedly as she pictured his handsome smile. She made her way up the last flight of stairs that led to the hallway of Erwin's office, and her heart's fluttering was quickly silenced when she spotted Markus' well-built silhouette, and his aid, exiting said office.

She thought about turning around before he saw her to avoid any interaction with him, as she usually tried to do. For the past several weeks, the brigadier general had insistently asked her to accompany him on outings — dinners, strolls, theatre performances, you name it — to which she had always politely declined. For the life of her, Lyor couldn't figure out why the officer refused to give up. Not only was she not interested in him, being twenty-five and he in his late thirties or early forties, she also wasn't ready to be the object of a scandal.

Before she could make a decision, his eyes fell on her, and Lyor steeled herself for the walk down the hallway to face him, clutching Erwin's book to her chest. She threw on her best fabricated smile and strolled towards him as he carefully watched her, a bewitching grin scrawled on his face while he advanced.

"Ms. Reichart! A pleasure to see you, as always," Markus greeted brightly, his aid offering a small nod behind him as a greeting. "Here to see Smith?"

Lyor looked up at him with a diplomatic smile, meeting his piercing green eyes. "Yes, sir."

"Perfect timing — I was just with him to discuss your research's progress. He's quite proud of you folks, you know," Markus commented before his eyes fell on the book she held, the title of the book turned outwards for him to see. "Well, well, aren't we a fan of the phonics?"

Lyor had trouble swallowing the nervous lump in her throat, and she gripped the book tighter and avoided his gaze. "Yes, sir."

"Also a fan of the monosyllable, I see," His grin never faltered. "No matter. You'll have to let me borrow it one day; I'd love to get my nose into a book I know you've read."

Her eyes snapped to meet his, sending a shiver of pleasure down Markus' spine. The flame of her effrontery thrilled him. "I'm sorry, brigadier general. This book doesn't belong to me."

Markus repressed a chuckle as he saw the perfect opening to toy with her. She must've been returning Erwin's book; he had seen them together quite a bit these past few months. Markus had suspected Lyor was enamoured with the blond; from the way she carried herself around him, to the way her eyes drank in every detail of his person when they interacted. Markus knew he had no chance, unless he planted his seed.

"I see. It's Erwin's, isn't it? I should've guessed; it looks just like the books Marie used to give him."

Lyor felt her stomach lurch. "Marie?"

"His old sweetheart," Markus stroked his short beard with his gloved hand, recalling his memories. "Ah, the poor fellow, I believe she went on to marry his best friend at the time. Nile Dawk — he works with me now. Dawk told me all about how it ruptured their friendship. Love can be such a horrible thing, can't it?"

The tall man watched her face fall for a split second before she iced over her features.

"I suppose." She replied, her voice not betraying her cool and calm facade. However, Markus knew the damage was done. He smirked to himself.

"Speaking of, when are you going to let me treat you to dinner?" He flashed her a toothy smile.

With as much calmness and poise as she could muster, Lyor retorted with a half-hearted smile. "If only I hadn't just joined a convent, sir…"

Markus let out a deep laugh. "Wicked girl…" He answered with a smirk, walking past her as his aid and long coat trailed behind him. "Give my best to your father."

Lyor stood in the hallway, her shoulders heavy with disappointment as the officer walked away. The blow Markus had indirectly dealt her was one of the worst she had received in years. Forget hearing about Erwin pining for another woman, how could he give her one of his ex's gifts? Lyor wasn't foolish enough to hope Erwin had any feelings for her, but she found it completely unacceptable for him to present her with such an item — even as a simple platonic gift. _You don't do that to a friend._

Dejection now turned into irritation, Lyor knocked on Erwin's door. Lyor opened the door to find him sitting at his desk, after he allowed her to enter. His striking eyes rose to meet hers, and she buried the impulse to simply toss the book and report on his desk and leave without a word. Instead, she disguised any emotion in her face with diplomacy, and calmly walked over to his desk.

She watched him part his full lips to speak, but she interrupted him. "Hanji sent me to give you this." She reached across his desk and handed him the report, her voice and face stoic. He took the report from her and placed it on his desk, thanking her. She then presented the red and gold book she held in her arms. "I also want to return your book."

Erwin watched her motionlessly, trying to dissect her demeanour. He knew something was bothering her. Finally, he leaned back in his chair, folded his arms across his powerful chest, and spoke. "No, keep it. I told you; I want you to have it."

Lyor fought the urge to knit her brows. "It's a first edition book, and it belongs to you. I can't accept it."

"I won't take it back." The blond retorted, his eyes — his most defining feature — holding no sign of emotion. He noticed the irritated twitch that pulled at the corner of her mouth.

"Why not?"

Not wanting to admit to her that he had bought that book for her, it was a difficult question to answer. He decided to offer a simple answer. "I don't want it."

This only fuelled Lyor's resentment — he didn't want to take back something that reminded him of the woman he loved, she interpreted. With a prideful glare and all previous thoughts of inviting him to her graduation gone, the brunette exhaled. "Fine. If you'll excuse me, sir."

Lyor bowed her head, squared her shoulders, tucked the book under her arm, and turned on her heels. She left the room without another word, briskly walking through the hallway, feeling misled and fooled. She brushed her hair out of her face and made her way down the stairs with dignity — she wasn't the type to fall apart because a man didn't want her. Finally, she crossed the courtyard outside, on her way to the headquarters' exit, and spotted her favourite brigadier general speaking with a scout — the man's posture impeccable and his hands folded behind his back. Her interaction with Erwin hadn't been very long, and it had permitted her to involuntarily catch up to Markus.

With an air of resolution, she marched over to the seductive man, who turned at the sound of her steps. He smiled and began to articulate whatever asinine comment came to him before she shoved the book he had seen her with into his chest.

"Here." She spat, and he scrambled to keep the book from dropping to the ground. She was already several feet away from him by the time he could answer. Markus looked at the book in his hands, then watched her walk away for a few moments. He felt a sneer pull at his lips.

* * *

That evening, Erwin walked into his commander's meeting room. He was early for his meeting, so he was a bit surprised to find the room occupied when he opened the door. Markus sat at the table, his feet lazily kicked up, his coat draped on the back of his chair, and a book balanced in his hands. Lyor's book. Erwin nearly choked, but the soldier never let his mask fall, and when Markus' emerald eyes lifted to meet his, Erwin was making his way to his seat. He pulled out a chair and set his reports and documents in a neat pile in front of him. He sat across from the higher ranking officer, and the two men seemed to glare at each other for a split second, their heights identical and their eyesight level.

"Hello, Smith! Bring any coffee?" He exclaimed, breaking the tension and placing the book down on the table as he draped his arm over the back of the chair beside him.

Erwin watched him placidly. Tactful and poised, and his presence imposing, he replied. "There's coffee in the kitchen across the hall. Please, help yourself."

"Don't mind if I do." Markus swung his feet off the table and stood, groaning loudly as he stretched. "Man, I didn't see the time fly! I guess that's what happens when you get sucked into an excellent book," The man walked himself to the door after patting said volume on the table. He opened the door, and before exiting, he sneered at Erwin over his shoulder. "I'll let you borrow it sometime."

* * *

A/N: Thoughts? Comments? Concerns? :D


	9. Chapter 9: Thyme

The late afternoon sun hung low in the sky, casting a magnificent spring evening upon the Trost district. Within the city's bustling uptown, hoots and hollers were heard from the inside of an animated bar. Inside sat a few dozen military officers and civilians, drinking and talking merrily amongst themselves while a small ensemble of musicians played various gigues and folk songs for their patrons.

Hanji's squad, including Rick and Lyor, sat at a long wooden table, each of them dressed in civilian garments. They were in the middle of a drinking game when Hanji, who sat at the head of the table, downed her fourth pint of beer and slammed it down proudly. Sitting adjacently to the squad leader was Lyor, and Moblit across from her. The seat beside Moblit was empty, as Keiji had gotten up to present the group (and the entire bar) with a song — The Fisherman's Ballad.

The group cheered him on, but mocked him exuberantly for his handful of drunken voice cracks and attempts at dancing. Lyor stifled a giggle when Keiji nearly accidentally spilled his beer on the violinist, the mouthful of alcohol she had threatening to come up her nose if she laughed. She had been careful not to drink too much, but the heat in her face warned her to eat something before she continued.

Over the laughter that erupted from her group when Rashad threw ice cubes at Keiji, Lyor waved down a barmaid, and she thanked her when she was handed a menu.

"Food! Good call, Lyor." The menu caught Nifa's attention, who sat beside her. They perused the list of meals together before their view was obstructed by Hanji's hand smacking the menu onto the table.

"Hey, hey! We're here to get drink, not to eat. You'll slow the drunken-ing process!" Their squad leader slurred, while Moblit made sure she didn't tip over in her chair, muttering about how she can't just make up words.

"Hanji, I haven't eaten since lunch. I'll remind you that you're the one who cut my dinner early when you snuck us out of the graduation ceremony early," Lyor retorted, watching Hanji teeter in her seat before returning to her menu. "I don't want to be sick."

"Goody-goody…"

"Oh, how was the ceremony?" Nifa asked, genuinely interested. Lyor opened her mouth to reply, but Hanji interrupted.

"Long and boring! I can't believe I was the only one who showed up!" Hanji leaned over to bunch Lyor's cheeks in her hands. "Our poor, abandoned newbie."

"None of us had the day off!" Moblit objected while Lyor smacked Hanji's hands away.

"I know that, but apparently Hanji can't keep track of her squad members' schedules," Lyor jabbed, glaring at her boss, but then offering a smile to her teammate. "Don't worry about it, Moblit."

"You know, I know of a person who had today off, but curiously enough, I didn't see him anywhere," Hanji commented, leaning back in her chair, while Keiji finally regained his seat only to be assaulted with insults about his singing by the rest of the group. Lyor pretended not to hear Hanji and stuck her nose back into her menu. "Did his invitation get lost in the mail?"

Still pretending not to hear her, Lyor hummed thoughtfully at the menu. "I wonder what their best dish is…"

The brunette huffed, and placed her elbow on the table to lean her cheek into her hand. "So, are you going to tell me what it is you two are fighting about?"

"We're not fighting." Lyor stated flatly, flipping the menu over, her eyes still focused on the list of meals.

"Okay, are you going to tell me what is you two are not fighting about that keeps you from talking to each other?"

"What about the chicken breast?"

"What about 'Lyor's two years old'?"

"Never heard of it. Is that a soup?"

Hanji huffed and gave up, ordering another beer from the bar from her spot. "You're impossible."

"Oh, you're right, 'you're impossible' is the soup dish."

The group ordered another round of drinks and a few meals for the hungry ones, and they fell back into another heated discussion about whether or not Hanji had a crush on Shadis. Hanji was in the middle of grabbing Rashad by his shirt collar when Lyor's laughter was interrupted by the sight of two men entering the bar. She quickly averted her eyes when she risked to meet blue ones.

"Squad leader Erwin! Mike! You made it!" Lyor watched Moblit stand from the table to greet the two men. Lyor couldn't help but watch Erwin out of the corner of her eye while he conversed with the younger man. Effortlessly handsome, as always, he wore a casual dress coat over his usual civilian combo — white button up and slacks — and he paired his outfit with an indiscernible expression. He had yet to notice her, but for the briefest second, while Lyor eyed him, he was the only person in the room who existed.

"Come have a seat and discuss my personal life with us! It's apparently up for debate." Hanji chimed from her seat to her old friends, her smile betrayed by the passive-aggressive vein popping in the side of her temple, and the handful of Rashad's shirt in her fist.

"When is it not?" Erwin retorted, and Lyor forced herself not to laugh.

"Two more beers please!" Rick called as the two men took a seat across and on the opposite end of the table from Lyor.

Over the music and the chatter, the barmaids brought the group their drinks, and Keiji stood after a few minutes, albeit unsteadily, and raised his pint in the air.

"To our new squad leader, Hanji!"

"Hear, hear!" The group answered, and they each raised their glasses. Smiling, Lyor's eyes wandered to the other end of the table. Her eyes met Erwin's across the way, who also held up his glass with an easygoing smile, before his blue eyes reminded her of the regret he had caused her. She pulled her gaze away, and saw Hanji stand up in her peripheral vision, her drink raised high. She could still feel his gaze on her.

"Not another speech, Hanji!"

"Silence!" She snapped, before regaining her seriousness with a hiccup. "And to our newbie's graduation! To Lyor!" Some of Hanji's beer spilled on the table, and Nifa and Abel inched away from it, laughing, while Moblit scolded his leader.

"Hear, hear!" And with that, the group collectively downed their umpteenth pint, applauding and cheering as Hanji bowed.

"Now, as per Recon Corps drinking protocol, honourees are subject to entertain their guests with a song," Rashad recited matter-of-factly, folding his arms over his chest. Lyor watched the rest of the squad nod along. "We've heard Hanji sing —"

"Too many times!"

"So now, pray tell, Lyor, what song will you grace us with tonight?"

From across the way, Erwin noticed Lyor's flush spread even further on her face as her colleagues eyed her expectantly, and she waved her hands in panic. "What? No, I'm not any good!"

"A song, a song!" Someone twittered, and after the group broke into a chant, repeating 'sing' over and over again, the blond watched Lyor reluctantly get up from her spot. The group exploded into applause and cheers, and Erwin smiled to himself as he watched her make her way over to the group of musicians.

His eyes never left her figure as she leaned down to speak to the pianist, most likely requesting a song. He noticed the change in her appearance: she wore a tailored navy dress, intricate embroidery framing her décolleté, and the fit flattering her hourglass figure. He also noticed the small, elegant pearl earrings that hung from her ears, her brown locks pulled back into a half-do, tied with a thin, delicate ribbon. Paired with his finely tuned observational skills and Hanji's habit of divulging information to him, he divined that she had gone to her graduation ceremony earlier that day.

Hanji had spoken with him about it, trying to set a time to pick him up in order to split the carriage ride cost with him, and she had been surprised when he told her he wasn't going. Hanji, knowing the two were good friends, had tried to assure him she must have simply forgotten to invite him, but Erwin refused to show up to the event unannounced. Erwin was too occupied for frivolous matters to think anything of Lyor's actions — or lack thereof — but he always wondered if something had happened to suddenly disjunct their friendship. He would have to congratulate her another time. But if anything had perturbed him, it that she had given his gift to a certain brigadier general.

Ridding himself of any undesirable thoughts, Erwin took a swig of his cold, refreshing brew, and turned his attention to the musicians and Lyor, who stood, sheepishly, before her comrades. The group gave her another round of cheers as the pianist introduced the folksong with a few arpeggiated chords, and the young woman began to sing.

 _Come all you fair and tender girls, that flourish in your prime, beware, beware, keep your garden fair, let no man steal your thyme, let no man steal your thyme._

The folksong was slow and solemn, and it seemed to hush all commotion from the bar. She clearly wasn't a singer, her timbre not remarkably high, but her voice was airy and delicate, and the notes were at least in tune. Erwin couldn't help the smile that pulled at his lips as he attentively watched her. She placed a palm over her middle, as if monitoring the intake of her breaths.

 _For when your thyme, it is past and gone, he'll care no more for you, and every place where your time was waste, will all spread over with rue…_

"Will all spread over with rue." Erwin, lost in her words, only noticed the male voice that sang in unison when Lyor's expression shifted.

Everyone, including Erwin, followed her surprised glance across the floor, and they spotted Markus, sitting at a table of MP's in the corner of the bar. The officer stood as the music continued, the sleeves of his chemise rolled up, and a vest donned around his middle. His green eyes never left hers. Involuntarily, Erwin's grip on his glass tightened, but his face never exuded any emotion, and he blinked placidly as the events unfolded before him.

 _The gardener's son was standing by, three flowers he gave to me, the pink, the blue and the violet true, and the red, red rosy tree, and the red, red rosy tree._

Singing through her surprise, Lyor watched Markus advance towards her as he sang in harmony with her. She wondered when he had gotten here, and why she couldn't take her eyes off of him. Whether it was the alcohol or not, Lyor's heartbeat quickened as he flashed a charming smile at her, and she returned it. Had he always been here, and had they simply not noticed him this whole time?

 _But I refused the red rose bush, and gave the willow tree, that all the world may plainly see, how my love slighted me, how my love slighted me._

His voice deep and skillful, he sang the last verse with her as he stood directly beside her, and Erwin shifted in his seat. They finished the song together on different, harmonising notes, and the entertained crowd let out an eruption of drunken applause and whistles. The blond applauded out of political necessity, and the two singers smiled at the crowd and bowed facetiously. He watched, thankful, Hanji interrupt Markus' ignition of conversation with Lyor to hand her a drink. The two women downed their drinks in front of the squadron, as per their requests, earning themselves yet another roar of cheers.

Everyone regained their seats, and food was finally served to the table. Erwin watched Markus walk back to his table, and with his presence gone, Erwin finally engrossed himself in conversation with his fellow scouts, trying to forget the moment the couple had shared.

They ate, drank, laughed and sang for a few more hours, before Lyor began to feel a bit claustrophobic from all the noise, cigarette smoke and alcohol stench.

"I'm going to go get some fresh air," She excused herself to Nifa who barely heard her over Hanji and Keiji's hectic debate about Commander Shadis' expanding bald spot.

The same blue sky that had watched over the bar for the day was now engulfed in a blanket of midnight black, dotted with stars. Though the street was asleep, the bar was not. A few street lamps lined the street, and the flames licked the air with the soft glow of their light. From outside, Lyor could hear her friends' laughs and singing. A moment did not go by without entertainment that night.

Lyor leaned against the bar's window ledge, and inhaled the crisp midnight air. She thought about how she had caught a twitch of jealousy in Erwin's face during her song, when he thought she wasn't looking. She smiled coyly to herself.

"I thought we were rather good together," Lyor's head turned to find Markus making his way towards her from the bar's entrance.

She smiled politely and her eyes returned to the street in front of her. "So did I."

"We would make a fine duo." The man commented, leaning on the windowsill beside her. She hummed absentmindedly, enjoying the mixture of the fresh evening air and the slight buzz of inebriation. She heard him laugh. "You finally agree with me? Does this mean you'll let me take you out?"

She scoffed and gave him a surly look. "Have I not made it clear enough for you?"

"You're being stubborn."

"Oh, no, I've shocked you," She replied sarcastically before she turned to have her body face him. He watched her inquisitively, a smile still on his face. "Why are you so insistent?" She finally asked — blurted — what had bugged her about him for so long.

"Because I like you," He smirked, his arms crossed over his chest as he eyed her through hooded eyes. "And you're beautiful."

She blinked at him in disbelief before she copied him and crossed her arms, looking away as she scoffed. "Oh, please."

"What angers you, exactly?" He spoke evenly, his tone impish. "What I said or the way I said it? There must be some man who tells you that you're beautiful."

"Not to my face, no," She retorted before she locked eyes with him. She felt particularly outspoken tonight now that she had alcohol to blame for any regretful outbursts. "But there are thousands of women who must throw themselves at you in the inner city. You're a high-ranking, probably rich, military police officer. And your looks don't make women, you know, _gag_ , so you must have your pick of companions."

Markus watched her without saying anything, only a smirk on his lips.

She shifted uncomfortably under his stare, her foot stomping impatiently. "Is it a sport thing, then? The more I say no, the more you see me as some sort of prize to be won?" Lyor finally punctuated when he didn't answer.

"You don't think very highly of yourself, do you? You don't think I could simply, genuinely, like you?" The way he chuckled made her skin prickle. He was impressed that she had figured out something was off with his pursuits. "You could say it's something like that, yes, but you don't know enough about me to figure me out."

He stood to his full height, uncrossing his arms, and his eyes suddenly became very ominous. Lyor stiffened as his signature smirk fell, and for the first time, she saw him glower. "I do not appreciate people going over my head."

She watched him carefully, blinking in confusion.

"When I first heard of your father, I was assigned by the crown to his case. You see, your father _really_ doesn't care for obedience, my dear Lyor. We told him to stop his research on the grounds that his projects were too dangerous to carry out alone for the public. What happens if — when —a plane crashes into a crowd of people? My men offered him a position within the inner walls, with good pay and a safe place to execute his projects, but the man simply refused to oblige. So what happens when you say no to the crown? We're forced to make you oblige. Real shame about your mother."

Lyor was stunned. Markus took a step closer to her, and she could only watch him.

"But even after all these years of warnings and sneaking around, I found out that your little group is making illegal trips outside the walls! I had evidence!" A cynical smile broke out onto his face, and he threw his hands up. It made Lyor flinch, as he was now standing only a few centimetres from her, his height towering over her smaller frame, and she tried to back away only to have him follow her. "I get _this_ close to catching you rats, when I'm suddenly told to back off and to let the Scouts handle you. _Ten years_ I've been working on this case, and the instant I call for Reichart's arrest, all of his crimes are suddenly pardoned, and he's allowed to work on the very same projects I was tasked to forbid."

With every step he took closer to her, Lyor began to feel more and more panicked. Feeling threatened, she tried to brush it off with a nervous laugh, and started towards the bar. "Ha-ha, brigadier, you're quite the talkative drunk. Please excuse me."

Before she could get anywhere, she felt his broad hand snake around her wrist, and he pulled her roughly back to him. With a hand on his chest to create a semblance of distance between their bodies, Lyor shrinkingly looked up at him, into his brazen eyes. Any sign of amusement had vanished from his features, and she could feel his breath on her lips.

"As I said, I don't appreciate people going over my head. I'm also a man who savours vengeance, you see," he continued without skipping a beat. His grip on her wrist tightened, and she winced at his immense strength. "And what better vengeance than to make the antagonist's daughter your bride?"

Lyor wanted to laugh in shock, but all she could do was stare at him, stupefied. In the moment of shuddering silence they shared, Lyor pulled at his grip, and he allowed her wrist to slip out of his grasp. He also allowed her to back away from him, and she rubbed at her wrist as she glared at him.

"And you expect me to marry you over this empty monologue? Or are you going to walk me down the aisle handcuffed and gagged? I wonder if my grandmother will cry of joy."

Finally, trademark nonchalance returned, and he smiled at her wit. "Of course not. Why don't you just wait and see?"

Back inside the bar, Erwin was in mid-debate with Rick, Hanji, and Mike about which kind of whiskey paired best with pork ribs when he saw Lyor enter the room, her face blanched. The three continued to yell drunkenly at each other, but Erwin watched her walk over to their table, her eyes sullen. As Erwin stood from his seat, he noticed Schoenberg re-entering the bar, the usual curl on his lips when he sat back down with his men at their table. He looked back at Lyor who sat, her posture slouched, and he moved to walk to her when Hanji suddenly collapsed on the ground behind him.

"Hanji!" Moblit exclaimed, and moved to kneel beside her.

Hanji, on the ground, laughed uncontrollably before she trilled a moan and held back a dry heave. "Ugh, Moblit, I don't feel so good."

"You don't say…" Moblit sighed, and Erwin turned to recover his steps towards Lyor, only to find her walking past him to help Moblit get Hanji off the floor.

"Let's get you to bed, Hanji." Lyor laughed — though Erwin could see past her smile to her eyes that crinkled with worry — and she and Moblit made plans to take the squad leader home. Feeling certain that Lyor would be safe tonight with Hanji and her assistant, he refrained from intervening and took his original seat with Mike. Whether he liked it or not, it wasn't his place to meddle in the woman's affairs, and this became the best state of mind for him to repress any worry that threatened to plague him.

Half an hour later, Lyor, Moblit, and a quasi unconscious Hanji descended from their carriage ride and helped Hanji to her room within the Recon Corps' HQ. Once in her room, Lyor assured Moblit that she could handle it from here, and bid the young man a good night.

Lyor dragged Hanji to her bed, the squad leader's arm over the brunette's shoulder, and laid her down as gently as she could. While Hanji moaned to no one in particular, Lyor gathered a bucket to place beside her superior's bed, and she filled a glass of water to force down Hanji's gullet. It wasn't too hard, considering the woman could barely lift her arms, but she did receive a few slurred insults. She filled another glass to place on Hanji's bedside table, and sat on the edge of her bed for a moment.

She stared blankly at the floor, deep in thought.

 _Why don't you just wait and see?_

Markus' voice echoed in her head like a scream in an empty valley, and it made her shudder.

"Hanji… I need to tell you something…" Lyor hesitantly spoke, as if Markus would hear every word if she said them too loudly. She turned to Hanji, who was embracing her pillow with her eyes closed, slobbering all over it.

"Oh, commander Shadis…" She moaned.

The scene made her momentarily forget her anguish, and the young woman let out a chortle at her squad leader. Her friend's state alleviated her distress. It had been an eventful evening, and the younger woman to decided to chalk up Markus' actions to a mere drunken vocalisation.

Lyor draped a blanket over Hanji. _I guess she really does have a thing for Shadis._

* * *

The following Monday morning, Lyor greeted the familiar soldiers she crossed on her way to her squad's offices, and paused in the hallway when she saw Hanji, Keiji, and Moblit all making their way to the mess hall for breakfast.

"Good morning." Lyor smiled at her coworkers as she met them halfway, and Hanji and Keiji both groaned and shuddered at her voice. Lyor blinked at Moblit. "What did I do?"

"You spoke in a normal volume," Moblit offered. "They're still hungover."

"Hasn't it been almost 48 hours?"

"I think I know what an aneurysm feels like before you have it…" Hanji grumbled before she walked past Lyor to get away from their echoing voices.

Keiji followed suit and added, "Like a baseball the size of a cantaloupe in your head."

Lyor heard Hanji giggle unintelligently. "Good one."

Moblit sighed to himself before he turned to his coworker. "Want to grab some breakfast with us?

"No, thanks. I already ate. I'm going to get a head start on things this morning." She smiled and waved goodbye, heading towards her shared office.

When she got there, she found the place empty, to her relief. She wanted some peace and quiet this morning to bury herself in her work — it was one of her coping mechanism. She hung her coat before she walked over to her desk, and she was about to set down her bag when her eyes spotted something unusual at her workstation: a humble bouquet of purple creeping thyme flowers placed in a glass vase. She raised an eyebrow, set her shoulder bag on the ground, and sat down at the stool at her desk. Curiously, she picked up the small card. It read:

 _Come all you fair and tender girls that flourish in your prime_

 _Beware — keep your garden fair. Let no man steal your thyme._

 _Congratulations on your graduation._

 _Erwin Smith_


	10. Chapter 10: Tamper

Lyor, whose eyelids were inclined to fall together on the smallest provocation of silence, yawned without parting her lips to avoid any inconvenient extent. It was nearly eight o'clock in the evening, and the sun was setting through the window over the hills of the Recon Corps' training grounds. She sat in the mess hall, her books and notebooks strewn across the empty wooden table along with a tray containing her now room temperature dinner. With dinner having been served at six-thirty, the mess hall was quiet and practically empty, and it seemed to yawn with her in sympathy. She quietly scribbled notes as she hunched over her books, consumed by her work.

She didn't notice she was no longer alone in the hall until someone sat across from her at her table, setting their respective food tray down. Her eyes tore away from her work, and to her surprise, she found Erwin standing before her. She cringed internally; she had practically thrown her back out trying to avoid him ever since she had learned a very unpleasant piece of information about him. Marie. The name festered in her.

"May I sit with you?" Erwin smiled, poised and regal, as per usual. Lyor found herself irritated from just looking at his chiseled face.

Without batting eye, Lyor brought her eyes back to her work. "Sure."

She heard the chair pull out and unobtrusive shuffling as he took a seat. They sat in silence for several minutes as he ate his vegetables and whatever sewer mush the cooks masqueraded as meat, the sound of his fork occasionally scraping against the porcelain being the only conversation between them. Lyor pretended to work, but the officer's presence tormented her. Erwin couldn't be ignored. Still, she kept her gaze to herself.

"You're still working at this hour?" He finally asked after nearly finishing his meal.

Lyor never looked at him. "I have to; we've got our first official test run next week and we're nowhere close to being ready."

"You shouldn't work during meals."

"Hn."

She felt him staring a hole through her, and from her vision's angle, she saw him put down his utensils.

"Why did you give the book to Schoenberg?"

Lyor's heart skipped a beat at the abrupt confrontation, and she finally met his eyes. Those enigmatical, unwavering pools of blue scrutinised her and pulled her into his persuasion with such authority that she couldn't hold his eye contact without reddening.

The mention of Markus made her insides twist with anxiety. She had drowned herself in her work these past few days in order to discourage any sentiments of worry to inhabit and obsess her; she had yet to internalise anything Schoenberg had said to her, and she wasn't ready to deal with it. When she had no answers, running away — though she would never admit — was her go-to solution.

Provocative and mulish, she answered him, finally holding his discerning stare. "It's my book. Am I not allowed to loan my own book?"

"You should have nothing to do with him."

She paused at his forwardness. "You criticise your superior? He's a perfectly decent man."

"That's not what I believe. Nor is it what you believe."

"Why? Prejudice simply because he's a military police officer?"

"I like MPs. But not this one. I believe him to be malicious. Stay clear of him."

"And what is it to you?"

Lyor watched the blond's expression tighten into a grim one.

"I'm not such a fool as to imagine our friendship is anything but advantageous to you. But don't suppose I'm content to minister your time in the Scouting Legion. One day, I will no longer be a mere squad leader, and I will leave you. You can be sure of that. But for now, I care too much for my relationship with your father to see you go to ruin because of _him_. So if you don't mind, I'll…" She was surprised to see him falter in his speech, the intensity of his burning gaze quelling in the slightest way before returning to its natural, unreadable state. "I'll stay by your side."

The young engineer could only gawk at the man, and he meditated on her silent reaction.

"I can see you're very busy, so if you'll excuse me," Erwin glanced at her books and stray paper, and finally stood up, tucked in his chair, and took his tray. "Good evening."

With the wings of freedom upon his back, the man walked away. He had just reached the time of life at which 'young' was ceasing to be the prefix of 'man' in speaking of one. He was at the brightest period of masculine life, for his intellect and emotions were clearly separate: he had passed the time during which the influence of youth indiscriminately mingles them in the character of impulse, and yet… He hadn't been able to dissociate from the apprehension that sounded in him whenever he witnessed the budding relationship between Lyor and his superior. He certainly prized his connection with Mr. Reichart, but it gave him an excuse to care openly for Lyor. Although he didn't regret it, he hadn't planned on voicing a smart-alecky monologue.

Exiting the mess hall, he could feel her eyes on him.

* * *

"What do I gotta say to get this crap into the hangar where it belongs? You got a language I'm not privy to? 'Cause I'm a fast learner."

"Keep your shirt on, Heinrich. This is the last of it."

The sky was clear, and sun hung high in the sky, overlooking the Scouting Legion's HQ as a handful of soldiers and engineers bustled about, straining to lug equipment out of the fourth squad's workstation garage. Lyor, Nifa, Abel and Rashad were out in the SC's hangar a few yards from the castle, fixing a large metallic frame into the ground that they would use to anchor the beast of an engine they were going to test that day. Lyor was on her knees, screwing in the last bolt of the structure's corner fixture, when she saw a wagon pulling into the hangar. Heinrich drove the horses while a few soldiers, including Hanji, followed on foot, making sure the wagon wouldn't collapse under the enormous weight of the engine it carried.

Wiping the sweat from her forehead, the young woman stood and warned her colleagues to make way. Once the cargo reached them, they all gathered around it. It took about twenty men to lift the engine and propellor from the wagon to the metallic frame, and then five to crank the structure to its proper height after having screwed the engine into the frame. Meanwhile, Lyor and Rick connected wires from the engine to their control station that stood about 10 meters from the propped up engine; a rectangular table-like metal desk that reached Lyor's middle. While the group worked, Wilhelm and Shadis stood at the entrance of the massive hangar, discussing the test-run's specifics.

The engineers, along with squad four, were going to conduct their very first test of their prototype steam engine. After weeks of blueprint after blueprint, and the endless wait for precious materials, the group of scientists had finally been able to assemble their first engine. With its' considerable size, they were now going to test its' strength and overall outcome.

With the engine, control board, and wires in place, the engineers took a last gander and walk around the machine to ensure all was primed before they congregated around the control board. Wilhelm began to brief the other three engineers when they started to hear a commotion from the hangar's enormous door. Looking behind them, they noticed the crowd of scouts that had gathered at the entrance like a bunch of inquisitive cats waiting for something monumental. Upon commander Shadis' inaction,— too busy staring curiously himself at the squad's project — Hanji stomped over to tell them all to 'quiet down', to put tactfully.

"Heinrich, you're in charge of adjustments. Rick, monitor the gas levels. Lyor, make sure you record everything, and I'll handle the control board," Wilhelm finished, ignoring the shouts. They all nodded, and they each began to make their final preparations.

"Where the hell is my notebook?" Lyor inquired, looking around the board for her observation book."Watch your language." Wilhelm warned, fatherly at heart. He adjusted a few notches on the control board as Heinrich slipped on his work gloves and took off his glasses — that were so high in strength that they looked more like looking glasses — and replaced them for a set of goggles that made his eyes look like ogling titan eyes.

"What did Shadis want? He doesn't look too happy." Rick asked Wilhelm, handing Heinrich his tool bag.

"He wants to know where the hell you put my notebook." Lyor grumbled as she searched.

Wilhelm pulled her notebook out of her belt as he answered — she had stuffed it behind her when they were working. Lyor took it sheepishly and settled in the stool beside the control board. "He was ensuring that everything was ready to go. The Scouting Legion spent a lot of their budget paying for our materials and he doesn't want us to waste them. And neither do I. If we have to buy more materials, we're going to have to seek out sponsors."

"Oh, great; more sponsor dinners." Rick interjected, huffing in annoyance.

"So, if we've double and triple checked everything, we won't need any of those," Wilhelm commented, giving Heinrich a thumbs up as the old man set himself up near the engine. He eyed Rick expectantly. "But only if we've triple checked our work."

Rick rolled his blue eyes and took his spot beside Wilhelm at the control board, Lyor sitting on a stool adjacent to them. "Yes, mother. With all four of us combined, we must have checked the damn thing twelve times today; we're good to go."

"Good," Wilhelm flashed a small smile to his friend before he turned to Shadis, who stood as rigid as a rock a few meters behind them. The commander gave the man a nod, signalling they could commence. "Then let's begin."

From her seat, with her notebook open in her lap, Lyor watched her father click and adjust buttons on the board, and the engine gave an awakening roar — making everyone slightly jump — before dying down to a comfortable purr. The three engineers couldn't help but give each other a proud smile, before Heinrich stepped up the propellor on a stepping stool, and gave the metal a strong push, making it spin. Before long, the engine kicked in and spun the propellor at an electrifying, but steady, speed.

The propeller generated a mighty wind that blew a few lighter items away in its wake — papers, screws, scrap pieces — and a grumbling roar so loud that no one could hear themselves over the noise. Lyor recorded down the details of the initial speed, and within a few minutes, Lyor's father kicked the gear up a notch. Second gear, and the metal sheets that covered the hangar began to waggle. Heinrich was walking around the engine, making sure that the machine was withstanding the strain. Repeating their pattern, Wilhelm made sure he got a thumbs up from Heinrich and that Lyor was finished her notes to move on to the next gear. In third gear, the rambunctious note the engine sang moved up a semitone, and Lyor felt the hairpin being blown out of her hair. She moved to snatch it as it fell out, but Hanji caught it in midair as she walked up to her colleagues.

She hollered over the cacophony to be heard, handing Lyor her pin. "This is fantastic! The noise alone will scare away the titans!"

They smiled as Heinrich and Lyor finished their respective roles while Hanji tried to ask questions over the noise. She watched curiously over Wilhelm's shoulder at the control board as he gradually pushed a lever to the last gear. The sheer power of the engine made everyone laugh in stupor: a few of the metal shingles were being blown off the roof, crates of sturdy wood were sliding away from the boisterous wind, and it seemed like Rick's beard was going to get blown off.

Heinrich rounded the machine, and the engineers smiled ear to ear when the old man gave them a thumbs up: the engine was working at top performance. Wilhelm and Rick celebrated with a handshake while Lyor and Hanji took notes, all of them euphoric from their success. Wilhelm reached for the lever to start progressively shutting the engine down, when the unthinkable happened.

A horrifying explosion, louder than the discord of the screaming engine, shred through the air, and the engineers froze in horror at the sight before them. A cloud of flames suddenly engulfed the engine in a flash explosion, Heinrich disappearing in the blaze. All the blood in Lyor's face depleted, and all she could do was sit there in shock.

The engine shut off from failure, and someone cried to put out the fire. When her legs finally responded to her brain, Lyor sprinted after her colleagues — some engineers, some soldiers — as they all barrelled towards where Heinrich was last seen. She noticed Erwin had been one of the first men to run to his side — as if appearing out of thin air. Pushing through the crowd that surrounded what she assumed would be the old man, Lyor finally caught up to Rick and Wilhelm, who knelt beside an unconscious body with Erwin.

Erwin bellowed for his men to help him move Heinrich's body out of the proximity of the burning engine, and Lyor witnessed the elderly man's state as they lifted him away: his left side had been practically charred — arm, side, and thigh — so severely that his clothes in those areas were burnt off, revealing angry, bloody red skin.

She watched the group carry her old friend away, and she held back the terror that seized her throat and voice like a plague before she clenched her fists to rid herself of it. Relieved that Heinrich was being taken care of, especially by Erwin, Lyor rushed over to the scouts to help them put out the engine's fire. They fetched buckets of water under Shadis' command before someone brought a hose to spray the machine down.

After a few minutes, the fire was subdued and put out completely. She watched the scout medics take away Heinrich to the infirmary while Wilhelm followed, panicked. Lyor moved to follow, but she was held back by Hanji. She looked the older woman in the eyes.

"Let's give the medics their space. Help me clean up this mess in the meantime before it damages our hard work," Hanji offered the brunette a compassionate smile. "He'll be okay; I've seen worse, trust me."

Lyor nodded, giving a small sigh of both relief and uneasiness. Lyor, along with Hanji, Rick and a few members of their squad, began to dismount the engine from the now charred and damaged metal frame. They unscrewed the bolts as a heavy silence fell on them. She was thankful for the mindless activity that kept her hands busy; it gave her time to think through what the hell had just happened. The only reason the engine could have exploded was if the exhaust nozzle hadn't ventilated the chamber properly, and the squad had worked for weeks on that principle. As Lyor sorted through her brain and her hands worked busily on the bolts, she finally noticed her hands were shaking. The image of Heinrich's limp, exhausted body sprawled on the ground flashed in her vision, and she couldn't run away from it by burying her thoughts in the technicality of their work anymore.

With a shaky breath, she felt tears start to swell in her eyes as she worked, but she was distracted by Rick's voice beside her.

"Guys, look at this," He breathed, and Lyor glanced to see he had opened one of the compartments of the engine to take a look inside. His face was pale as he stared into the engine, and Lyor braced herself for what else fate had in store for them.

Four of the squad members stepped up to Rick's spot, and they all peered over his shoulder into the agglomeration of wires, nozzles, and greasy pistons. Rick pointed to a specific connecting rod, and Lyor's brows furrowed: the metal rod was dented and damaged. She recognised the connecting rod to be the ligament that brought the exhaust nozzle to a wide, open angle in case of overheating.

Rick, breathless with dread and shock, spoke. "I was in charge of this piston chamber… I must've missed this damaged rod…"

"There's no way you could've ignored it; it's the first thing you see when you open the compartment." Nifa answered him reassuringly.

As the group poked around in the engine, Lyor watched them, absentmindedly. Nifa was right; an experienced engineer such as Rick would have never missed such a blatant defect. Someone could have tampered with it, but it would've had to been someone within the fourth squad, considering they were the only people who had access to the engine. Even so, no one in that squad could've had a genuine motive to tamper with the Legion's equipment — the entire squad was like a second family. She ran a hand through her hair, confused and now exhausted from coming down from her adrenaline high.

The compartments had even been thoroughly checked that morning by the engineers from the interior police and by Markus himself. How could they have all missed it?

Suddenly, a realisation made Lyor's face drain of all its colour.

* * *

"Failure is a part of life, however it is not a part of the Scouting Legion. I should've seen this coming a mile away… Do you realise we spent an entire six months of funding on building that failure of an invention? How is it possible that formally trained engineers could be so mortifyingly ineffective? Your man was almost killed!"

Lyor, Wilhelm, Rick, and Hanji and her squad watched Shadis pace and rant. Half an hour had passed, and they sat in a meeting room at a long table with Erwin and Shadis, Markus and his team of three engineers. Lyor was busy fidgeting in her seat, wondering how her father, Hanji and Rick could remain so imperturbable as their commander went off on a tangent about how gross of an immeasurable pile of failure they were. Her eyes drifted towards Markus, who sat leisurely in his seat, his arms folded across his chest as he examined the cuticles of his right hand. Her anger flared as she watched him; she knew he had tampered with their engine. There was no other explanation. He knowingly had almost gotten a man killed, and he sat there, looking at his nails.

She focused on Erwin, who sat beside Markus and across from her, his steadfast gaze watching his commander. He met her eyes when he felt her looking at him, and offered her an appeasing smile. Surprisingly, she felt her stress begin to melt under his soft gaze, but she looked away when Shadis took his seat at the head of the table.

"A defective rod? Markus, I expect this from civilians, but how did your team miss this?" Shadis fumed.

Markus shrugged and tucked his hand into his crossed arms. "Human error, Keith."

"Human error? Are you kiddi—"

"If I may, commander," Erwin insisted, and all eyes were on the handsome blond man. "Though this particular event may have ended in failure, Hanji can vouch for her squad's radical progress. Failure may not be part of the Scouting Legion, but it is undoubtedly part of the experimental process, even on a monumental scale. I must implore that you don't consider this a stalemate. Certainly, we'll need to request more funding, but it's a sacrifice we must pay for progress that could later save thousands of lives."

"He's right; give them a break," Markus added, a sordid smirk on his lips, and Lyor recoiled at the sound of his voice. "You'll throw another party for the sponsors, they'll cough up another drunken pile of dough, and we'll be on our merry way."

Shadis pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed heavily. "I suppose that will be our only solution," He looked up from his exasperation at Hanji. "The next time this happens, I will be putting an immediate and permanent halt on all projects, do you understand?"

"Yes, sir." Squad leader Hanji answered.

"Good," It was Shadis' turn to cross his arms. "Now, get your squad out of my sight. MPs are also dismissed."

Those who were dismissed stood and exited Shadis' meeting room. Lyor didn't leave without stealing a glance at the blond who remained in his seat for a debrief with the commander. He met her eyes, and she decided to return that kind smile that had put her at ease, in hopes that it would help him survive whatever Shadis was going to shit on him for. To her delight, he smiled back.

Being the last one out of the room, she was a few feet behind her squad in the hallway, and the other groups went their separate ways. She began her way to the squad's office when Markus walked in step with her.

"First time you've been chewed out? You're as pale as a sheet," He commented, leaning to see her face as they walked. Lyor said nothing, her teeth clenched so tightly that she was sure her jaw would break. Lyor watched Hanji and Moblit make stress-drinking plans as they disappeared around a corner, leaving Lyor and Markus alone in the hallway. "Ooh, you're not as pretty when you scrunch your face like that."

She suddenly stopped in her tracks and faced the man two heads taller than her, her brows furrowed and her eyes ablaze. "If you insist on making conversation with me, talk to me about something worthwhile. Why was that rod defective?" She snapped.

Markus' eyebrows rose at her temper before a signature smirk grew on his face. "Actually, I take that back; you're quite handsome when you've murderous intent."

"Answer me!"

"It wasn't defective when I personally inspected it." Markus finally answered.

"But it was after you tampered with it?" She blurted.

Markus' smirk vanished as he looked down at her with a menacing stare. He paused for a long time before his smirk reappeared expectantly. "Yes."

Lyor stomach churned, and she spoke lowly and viciously. "Heinrich, an eighty-year-old man, has third degree burns because of you."

Markus matched her tone and leaned into her so that she would back up against the wall to escape any proximity to him. "I told you to wait and see how I'd tame you, didn't I? Would you like the hear what's next?"

He was clearly irritated by the way she spoke to him. Lyor swallowed the panic that seized her, but she still couldn't speak. She pressed herself harder into the wall when his eyes flickered to her lips, and she ducked under his body to start walking away. His next words made her freeze in her steps.

"Rick gets home at exactly six o'clock every night. He takes a bath, then he's out the door at six-thirty to go visit his sweetheart. She has dinner prepared for him, every night, and they enjoy it together. Then they go to bed and fuck like rabbits before they fall soundly asleep in each other's arms," he recited darkly and factually.

She slowly turned around to face him, her hands shaking and her skin clammy. "H-how—?"

"In fact, they sleep so soundly that I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't notice the house being engulfed in flames until it was too late," his smirk looked like a grimace to her. "I'm not the brigadier general of the interior police for nothing, love. And once he's taken care of, I've already memorised dear Mr. Reichart's schedule. He doesn't do much now that your mother is dead, huh?"

Paralysed to her spot from sheer terror, she could only watch him as he approached her with a frightening sneer. His hand rose, and she flinched, but he only reached her hair, and he massaged the strand in his fingers. "Your hair looks nice down; it's so long. You should wear it like this for our wedding."

He released her hair and left before anything could be processed by the horrified girl. She wasn't sure how she made it back to her squad's empty office, but she found herself sitting at her desk, mindlessly staring at the ground.

She thought about telling someone — anyone — that she was being targeted, but she realised it would only be brought back to the MP anyhow, where he was the master puppeteer. Who would believe her without evidence? She put her face in her hands and tried to remember what it was like to breathe without feeling as if your ribs were going to burst, without the weight of her entire world on her shoulders. Hot tears stung her eyes as stress began to take hold of her; her friends' and father's face fresh in her vision. She thought about how cadaverous Heinrich had looked slumped on the hangar floor, blood staining his clothes, and a sob shook her body.

 _You should wear it like this for our wedding._

Her fists clenched so hard that her fingernails cut into her skin. Disgusted by herself and humiliated, she grimly realised her only option was to give in to Markus; her freedom wasn't worth the lives of three men, and she didn't have enough strength or resources to fight him.

To her dismay, she heard the office door creak open, and she looked up with a tear-stained face.

"Lyor? What's wrong?"

 _Your hair looks nice down; it's so long._

"Hanji, do you have pair of scissors?"

* * *

A/N: Like I said, I am NOT an engineer and don't have a single godforsaken clue how airplanes or engines work, so please bear with me. If you're an engineer or know the ins and outs of engines, I AM SO SORRY. The cringe is real.

Sorry there wasn't a lot of Erwin in this chapter! Trust me, my friends, it will pick up.

Lemme know what you thought! What would you do in Lyor's situation? I think I'd probably jump off a roof... Creepy bastard.


	11. Chapter 11: I Know

The clock struck two o'clock in the Supreme Commander's meeting room, and as if on queue, the latter called a close to the assembly. The handful of high-ranking officers saluted their Supreme Commander before leaving the meeting. Erwin followed in the steps of his superior as he stood from his seat, a disgruntled look plastered on the commander's face. Their request for additional funding had just been denied, and the Scouts had no other choice but to indeed throw a sponsoring event with what was left of their budget. This left a bitter taste in Shadis' mouth.

"Get in touch with Duke Lichtwark; he owes me, and he'll be able to reserve the venue. Ask him to have it ready for the end of the week. Then leave it to his wife to plan the event. After all, I doubt you joined the military to plan idiotic parties." As they exited the meeting room, Shadis and Erwin walked together, and the commander grumbled his instructions in indignation to his right-hand man.

"And for Maria's sake, if he asks you what colour tapered candles I want, shove the egg shell ones up his ass, would you?"

Erwin permitted a crooked smile at his commander's misfortune and the absurdity of it all. "Yes, sir."

Shadis, off to his next meeting in the capital, parted ways with Erwin. The blond officer steadily made his way through the immaculate halls of the military capital's HQ, his dexterous fingers curled around a file of documents, until he spotted an unpleasant character in the adjacent hallway from him. Assertive and unwavering, Erwin's strides never faltered as he faced the unavoidable. His fingers unwittingly pinched into the papers.

"Good afternoon, brigadier general." The blond stopped to greet his superior out of duty.

Markus turned his head. "'Afternoon, Erwin!" Markus replied cheerfully, and he dismissed his assistant. Left alone with the scout, the general requested to accompany Erwin, and the two men began their walk down the marble corridor.

Charismatic as always, Markus broke their silence. "So, what do you think? I didn't know the military police and scouts were in the habit of organising parties for those pot-bellied nobles. Perhaps we should officially make it a bi-monthly event."

Erwin answered, his eyes fixed on the walk ahead. "I can't say I'm a fan of them myself, sir."

"Do you think your engineers will come?"

"I'm sure they will."

"And you'll come too, I hope. I know Ms. Reichart would like you to be there."

Erwin paused. "I've no choice but to make an appearance."

Markus hummed to himself, his eyes looking to the ceiling in thought. "I wonder what I'll wear… Is there a knot that's particularly fashionable these days?"

"You're asking the wrong man, general." The blond monotonously retorted.

"What about women? Does a woman keep her promise?"

Thrown, the blond raised an eyebrow and turned his head towards Markus. "Sir?"

"Oh, you don't know? I asked Ms. Reichart to marry me." The man tilted his head to drink in any reaction from the scout, his lips donning a seemingly genuine smile. The malicious glint in his eyes — that only someone like Erwin could've noticed —betrayed his honesty.

Erwin felt his heart stop, but he refused to look at anything but what was in front of him; he wouldn't let his reaction fuel the brigadier's insidious remarks.

Markus continued to eye the blond, and when he elicited no visible reaction from him, he simply looked away and continued. "I'm waiting for her answer. Do you think she'll say yes?""

"Once again, I'm—"

"Please, you seem to know her well. Help me out."

Erwin paused for a long time, the clicking of their boots the only sound in the hallway. Reluctantly, he answered. "I suppose if it's not inconvenient to her."

Markus let out an amused laugh. "Smith, you've become quite cynical lately."

"Pardon my impertinence, sir, but I would rather not discuss personal matters of these sorts."

"Very well," The two officers reached the HQ's exit and found themselves before a large outdoor staircase descending to the main street level. "I just wanted to tell you in advance, Smith, because I believe I know your secret."

Something about Markus' tone obliged Erwin to stop. The men turned to face each other, emerald meeting sky blue, and Erwin realised that all signs of facetiousness had dissolved from Markus' aristocratic face. His green eyes mocked him.

"I've seen you together. The way you speak to her. And watch her. And look after her. I know her profound affection for you," The blond's unfaltering gaze parried the ominous glare as the air thickened around them. For what seemed like eternity, the men stood at the top of the stairs in silence.

Finally, Markus interrupted their tension when a grin broke out onto his face. He patted Erwin's shoulder nonchalantly and laughed. "But you've behaved like a man, and as an honourable rival. I'm profoundly grateful."

Cooly armed with a diplomatic quip, Erwin thought about replying, but they were interrupted by a sheepish soldier.

"General Schoenberg," Markus turned to face his subordinate. "The commander would like a word, sir."

Unruffled, the general bid Erwin goodbye with an easy smile. Quietly exhaling the breath he hadn't realised he was holding in, he watched Markus disappear back into the building with the soldier.

Strolling down the stairs and flagging down a coach to return to HQ, he unclenched his fingers from the papers in his hand. The pages were bitterly warped.

* * *

Wilhelm was sitting at the desk in his living room that faced the casement window when he saw his daughter walk by in the street. Putting his pen down and taking off his glasses, he stood as the front door opened.

"Hello, father." Lyor greeted him with a smile when she spotted him walking towards her.

She slid off her coat as they exchanged a kiss on the cheek, and Wilhelm noticed something different about her: her formerly long, ash brown hair had been cut into a bob that barely touched her shoulders. He also noticed the grim rings of grey haloing under her eyes. Not being one to vocalise these changes, the greying man returned to his desk but didn't sit. He straightened his stacks of papers and books to put away. Despite his concern over her apparent exhaustion, Wilhelm was happy to see his daughter. He turned his head to her.

"It's nice to see you, half-pint."

They both exchanged a laugh at the old nickname, and Wilhelm began to organise his books onto the bookshelf beside his desk. After hanging her coat, Lyor's lingering smile was interrupted when she noticed the now second damaged window in her father's home.

"Father, why are the windows broken?"

"Just kids being kids." Without hesitating, he continued to put away his books.

Her brows knit; she knew he was lying. "Kids broke two different sets of windows on either side of the house?"

Wilhelm replied with a thoughtful hum in affirmation, and took a stack of papers and quietly sat at the kitchen table a few steps from the living room. Lyor followed and sat across from him, her eyes perceptive as he flipped through some papers. "If I didn't know you any better, I'd say you were hiding something."

Wilhelm glanced up at his daughter from the papers he was organising. "Seems to run in the family, doesn't it?"

Lyor searched her father's sagacious gaze for the meaning behind his words. Afraid he would somehow figure something out if he looked at her long enough, she tore her eyes away. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You spend night and day at work. You haven't been home in two weeks,—"

Lyor cut him off without hesitation, unyielding. "Heinrich is recovering. Someone needs to pick up the sla—"

"— you've been irritable and uncooperative; nothing anyone does at work is good enough for you. You snapped at Hanji, your direct superior might I remind you, whenever she showed interest in your progress—"

"I don't like it when people interrupt me while I'm working."

"And I don't like it when people interrupt me when I'm speaking."

She pulled back at his articulation, his steely tone bringing back unpleasant memories of being scolded. "Sorry."

"Lyor, what's going on?"

There was a long pause before Lyor looked away from him again. She spoke as if she was addressing a stranger in the empty living room; reluctant and toneless. "Do you know anything about brigadier general Schoenberg?"

Wilhelm tried to decipher the significance of her question, but found that between all of these turbulent events, his daughter had perfected that emotional veil of hers. "The project supervisor? I can't say that I do." He replied as he sat back in his chair.

"He's from the interior police, but you've never dealt with him before?"

"The interior police has a lot of officers."

A cryptic silence fell between them after his matter-of-fact response, and he watched her drum her fingers on the table. After a few moments, she stood decisively from her spot and strolled to the kitchen counter where she filled a kettle.

"Would you like some tea?" She asked, dismissing their previous around in his chair, he watched her seriously. "Why are you asking?"

"Because I'm making tea."

Being accustomed to Lyor's evasiveness when it came to discussing her problems, he managed to suppress an eye roll. "Your wit won't work on me, half-pint."

"It's complicated."

He couldn't see her expression from the angle — not that it would have helped him much — but he recognised the edge in her voice. Wilhelm was a reoccurring witness to his daughter's emotional compartmentalisation since her teen years, and he couldn't be fooled by her ambiguity. He stood and joined her at the counter as she lit the stove, and gently placed his hand on her head. She looked at him curiously, and for a split second, he saw the same little girl that used to hold funerals for caterpillars.

The second passed, and he was left with the sight of a troubled young woman idly watching a kettle heat up.

"You're making me nervous." He admitted, but his daughter took his hand in hers and squeezed it. She extended him a reassuring smile.

"Don't be; I simply don't want to involve you. This is something I have to handle on my own."

He watched her walk away before he could ask anymore questions. She traversed the kitchen and living room towards the stairs leading upstairs. "Watch the kettle, would you? I have to get dressed for the gala."

"You're really going?" He called after her.

She peered at him from in between the banister poles. "Hanji said if I didn't get away from my desk, she'd solder my hands to it. Now that you've said I've been snapping at her, I don't want to find out if she was joking or not."

* * *

"Rick, you made it!" Rashad exclaimed from his seat as the broad man pulled out a chair from the squad's assigned table.

"Don't they ever think about scaling back a little?" He asked as he took a seat between Hanji and Kenji, gesturing at the ball room.

"They scaled back a lot. They cut two appetisers, cancelled the champagne fountain, and they reduced the catering staff to 21 servers not counting the point men." Lyor replied, making room for Rick at their table.

Keiji took a swig of his whiskey. "Well, you can't not have a point man 'cause then what's the point?" Tipsy, the group exploded into guffaws.

The immense ball room was full of bodies as the moon neared its halfway point, milling about or near collapse with flutes of champagne in hand and glasses of hard liquor. Some harassed the waitresses putting about, others puffed foul smelling cigars and tossed cards, chips and money on the tables circling the open area where people stood between themselves and acquaintances. These were the regular soldiers of the Scouting Legion and Military Police — dressed in their formal military attire and mingling amongst themselves — some swapping war stories, some discussing politics, and some, of course, playing drinking games.

It was comforting – how settled they were, how happy with just being. But they weren't the main focus of the party. In the middle of the room, groups of men and women stood and chatted over their alcohol and hors d'oeuvres, while the attendees in the open space in front of the musicians danced gracefully to their serenades. They wore intricate dresses and suits; lace and glimmering jewellery. They were clean cut, their posture rigid and their expressions perfectly poised. From a glance, anyone would know these were not soldiers or heirs of poor families, posh bastards that they were.

Being here only for appearances, she watched the nobles from her spot, as they drank and talked in pretentious voices and haughty laughs – never glancing away from their circle yet always seeming aware. It was enthralling to see, in a place where looking through wool was a favoured state of mind, their eyes were opened – forcefully or otherwise – they lived without the delusions of the general populace. The higher ranking officers from the two military divisions mingled among the nobles, finding their place among them due to their ranks. Lyor spotted Shadis and a few familiar squad leaders amongst the nobles.

She forced herself to tune out the absurdity of the event after a while, sipping at the almost-empty glass of wine in her hand. She brought herself back to her squad, busy laughing and drinking amongst themselves at their table, occasionally forced to partake in inane conversation with passing nobles. They were no longer on their turf; they were in the noble world where not paying attention to your word choice could land you in the streets, stripped of rank. How obscene.

People feared Titans, called them monsters and fled from them like rats. She knew better, knew how monstrous humanity could be – how disgusting and vile. Titans were mindless, pathetic. Humans were premeditated; they could be manipulated, bought or threatened into committing atrocities that would make Titans look like child's play. She pretended to not notice Markus between the crowd, schmoozing a group of lords.

Just as she lowered the glass from her lips, a voice spoke up from her behind her and Hanji, who sat beside her. "Ms. Zoe?"

The group turned to find a middle-aged woman standing across from them. She looked chummy, like a grandmother, dressed in a traditional dress, and a headpiece Lyor found to look slightly ridiculous.

"Mrs. Hamburg!" Hanji declared, pleasantly surprised. The squad leader shooed Rick out of his chair — muttering something about chivalry — and offered the seat to the older woman, two places down from Lyor. "It's been a while! How's your book store?"

"You haven't seen it since we added a second floor, dear," the lady replied. Lyor turned away from Hanji and the woman, resuming her previous conversation with her other coworkers. But she couldn't help but eavesdrop when she heard his name. "Mr. Smith must have told you about it."

"No, and that bastard never offers to pick up any books for me when he visits town!"

"Oh, he hasn't visited since the fall, dear," replied the older woman. "In fact, he bought a first edition Voltaire at that time. I'm not surprised that he hasn't visited in a while — it cost a fortune!"

Lyor, who was not far from choking on her drink, widened her eyes at her words.

Hanji turned to raise an eyebrow at Lyor's coughing fit.

The storeowner rambled to herself, "Yes, I've always wanted to ask him about it. He said it was a gift for his friend."

From her spot amongst her coworkers, she had the perfect view of their commander's right-hand man across the tables. That impenetrable man – taller than all the nobles he was speaking with – didn't look particularly friendly. He wore expensive shoes, a brown, formal military vest with a matching waistcoat, and the angle he faced her cast a shadow over his gunmetal blue eyes – he was handsome, and he was cold, that Erwin Smith. Cold, but oh so charming. She could tell that his eyes were trying to see something else entirely as they scanned around the group of nobles he was speaking to. She smiled as she finished the last bit of her wine. He was always watching with a cunning eye; watching things beyond his area. And that was something she admired in a man.

Lyor leaned forward to address the older woman. "What was the name of the book?"

She blinked at the stranger but eventually replied, "Dictionnaire Philosophique." Hanji eyed her friend suspiciously.

The brunette's heart fluttered, and she suppressed the wily smirk that threatened to stretch on her face.

"I'm also curious to know what his friend thought of it. Why don't we go ask him?"

"A-are you sure?"

Lyor stood, smoothing down her dress. She flashed a charismatic smile to the older woman, and charmed her into standing herself. "Yes, he's a good friend of mine. Please, come."

Baffled, Mrs. Hamburg nodded, bidding goodbye to her customer, and followed Lyor onto the floor.

Lyor watched Erwin catch their approach from the corner of his watchful eye, and he turned to the two women. She caught the slightest slip of surprise on his face before he replaced it with a diplomatic smile. He excused himself from the group of nobles, and the two women stood before him.

Though Erwin kept the observation of Lyor's shortened hair to himself, he noticed. He thought it rather suited her.

"Mr. Smith! It's been a while. How are you?" The storeowner smiled delightfully as she spoke, plummy.

"Ah, Mrs. Hamburg. I'm well, thank you." His voice was husky and accommodating, and Lyor eyed him with mischief at the piece of information she had just learned about him. Trying to contain her glee, she was bursting at the seams.

"Mrs. Hamburg came over here to ask you about the book you bought from her in the fall. What was the name of the book again, Mrs. Hamburg?" Lyor spoke, her voice silvery despite her thrill.

"Oh, that incredibly expensive first edition Voltaire for your lady friend. Did she enjoy the gift, sir?"

Lyor watched Erwin's eyes slightly widen as he looked from Mrs. Hamburg to her, and it took all Lyor's might to contain her laughter. In that instant, he looked like an innocent boy.

For the first time in weeks, her heart felt feather light.

Flummoxed, he seemed to struggle to form any words for a brief moment before the man finally pulled himself together. He locked eyes with Lyor, and she shot him a devious smirk. Amused, he managed a smile. "… I believe she did."

Mrs. Hamburg let out a small squeal. "How wonderful! I would have been so disappointed for you if she hadn't enjoyed it — it took me years to find such an impeccable edition."

"Yes, in fact, she loved it so much that she refused to loan it to anyone." With a pointed glance to the brunette, Erwin's fruity voice risked sarcasm, but only Lyor caught on.

Lyor sheepishly offered a smile, guilty as charged. "Considering she definitely knew you bought it especially for her, certainly. If she did loan it, she would feel like an absolute cretin."

Erwin's smile grew. He exhaled, and he felt the tension in his shoulders release as he drank in the colour of her eyes. "I know."

The conversation carried on for a few minutes, Mrs. Hamburg exchanging pleasantries with the officer and the young woman, before Mrs. Hamburg excused herself to find her husband — but not before falling for Erwin's charm and promising she would convince her husband to sponsor the Legion. Thanking her, the two bid the storeowner goodbye, and were left alone amongst the sea of attendees.

"You look nice." Erwin stated, and the two stood face to face, both of them cradling a flute of champagne in their hand.

"Yes, well, this is a really nice dress," Lyor retorted before she returned his smile. "You're freshly laundered."

"It happens from time to time," Entertained, the blond answered. "Are you enjoying yourself?"

Lyor repressed a sneer. "Actually, no, I've lost my cyanide capsule. Have you seen it?"

"I don't suit this kind of affair either." With a laugh, Erwin admitted, taking a sip of his drink as he eyed the crowd.

Lyor followed his gaze and sighed as they forlornly watched the sea of refined accoutrements. "I think it's about time I say good night."

"I wish I could go, too."

Lyor's skin prickled at the voice that came from behind them. "Oh, come now!"

Bitterly, the two turned to face the voice to see Markus approaching them: tall, provocative, and august. He seemed even more intimating than before, donning his formal military attire and a cunning smirk, drink in hand. Greeting him cordially, Lyor and Erwin were the epitome of diplomacy.

"Not before you've danced! Both of you. You two make a handsome couple," Markus gave Erwin an amiable pat on the shoulder as he eyed Lyor. She couldn't hide the forgery in her smile, but Erwin's facade was impenetrable. "The next song is about to start; why don't you two show me how well the Scouts dance? I insist." He punctuated with a leer.

The deviousness spread to Markus' eyes as the brunette and blond exchanged a meaningful but hesitant glance, until Erwin finally held out his hand. Lyor modestly placed her hand in his, and his touch was electric. Markus laughed heartily as the two of them smiled insincerely at the officer, walking away to the dance floor. With her hand tucked into his arm, Erwin and Lyor sifted through the crowd to the dance floor peppered with couples who bowed to each other when the song ended. She indulged in the opportunity to touch his arm, but she softly objected.

"Erwin, we don't have to."

"I'm not opposed to the idea."

A new waltz began, and Lyor let go of his arm. When they faced each other, Erwin noticed the flush on her face. It was a time to see a woman redden who was not given to the reddening as a rule: not a point in the milkmaid but was of the deepest rose colour. In considerateness, he pretended not to notice and gently took her hand in his, and chastely snaked his other arm around her waist. He couldn't ignore how incredible the indulgence of holding this woman in his arms was.

They fell in perfect synchronisation with the music and the other couples, but Lyor had trouble focusing. Her mind was hazy — their proximity and his scent intoxicated her: pine trees, leather and a subtle hint of cologne. All she could think about was the delightful burn of his touch on the small of her back, and the way his body towered over her own.

She compressed her lips to a demure impassivity, willing away any signs of bashfulness, and looked up at him. He smiled down at her when he felt her gaze — pure and penetrating — and an infatuated smile grew without thought on her lips. Blue eyes gazed into honey ones, and she felt as if they were the only two people who existed in that moment.

Lyor recalled the day they met, and she wondered what she had done to deserve that fateful encounter with a man as magnificent as him. She took in every detail of his features: the tenderness in his smile, his bushy eyebrows, sharp cheekbones, beaked nose, and the incredible strength in his gunmetal stare.

It suddenly became very clear to her that he was the only one for her.

* * *

A/N: *SCREAMS*

Although wtf is that son of bitch Markus up to?  
Pleaseleave me some of your thoughts!


	12. Chapter 12: Marie

With a head of shiny, sandy locks of hair curling past her shoulders, Marie Dawk stood before Lyor. Marie — unfortunately — was everything Lyor had imagined her to be: porcelain skin, button nose, milky blue eyes, petite frame. The very essence of femininity, really.

She had to hand it to whoever's hands her fate was in; this was the perfect way to shatter the one and only enjoyable moment Lyor had experienced in weeks.

Erwin and Lyor had ended up dancing through three songs together, never really finding the opportunity — or willingness — to exit the dance floor. Their tension had eventually dissipated, and they found themselves laughing and attempting livelier dances— Lyor teasing him about crushing one of her toes on accident when it was really her who had messed up the steps. By the end of their third song, Markus had urged her to come meet the soon-to-be commander of the Military Police, claiming it was an important contact to make for an engineer such as Lyor. She had been surprised when Erwin showed more reluctance — though muted — than her.

The reason behind his reluctance became apparent to her when the three of them stood amongst a group of strangers, Lyor's arm still around Erwin's.

"Ladies, gentleman, you all remember Erwin Smith. I did a little arm twisting and convinced his colleague Ms. Reichart to come entertain us, too." Markus introduced them to the handful of nobles: all women and a single gentleman. The gentleman, Nile, sported a short beard and a dark head of hair. He seemed happy to see Erwin, and Lyor recognised the smile to be that of an old friend.

"Erwin, it's been too long."

Her lightheartedness fell straight into the impeccable abyss of emotional misery that fate had ready for her on a moment's notice — especially these days — when Lyor heard the woman's voice, lilting, and her perfect, little hand on her husband's forearm, and the other resting on her swelling belly.

"Marie, Nile," Erwin's response had been completely casual and airy, as if he was greeting someone he barely remembered the name of. "I wasn't aware the two of you were expecting your second child."

Lyor noticed that the sight of the couple didn't faze him in the slightest. She would have taken this as a good sign, but her increasingly inebriated state made her think that he was just trying too hard. A server walked by, offering the group his tray of champagne flutes, and Lyor's hand slipped from the officer's arm to take one. She turned her back to the group when no one was paying attention, downed it, then reached for another one before the server walked away. She was too sober for this.

"We don't blame you; you can only tell Marie's pregnant in profile. Nothing in the face, nothing from behind," One of the other women in the group of nobles added, haughty and plummy. "We all hate her!"

All the women in the group giggled, and Lyor nearly pulled a muscle from the sheer effort it took to force a laugh.

Another woman placed an imperious hand on Markus' arm, her painted nails long enough to skewer a man in the heart. "Markus, is this the young engineer from Sina University you've been telling us about?"

As the woman gestured to Lyor, one of her friends interjected, "How wonderful! My son is starting his first year of Wallist literature in the fall. I'm quite jealous — it must be such a luxury to study literature."

"Oh, I know," Another woman added. "If I could, I would spend spend three years just reading."

"What book?" Lyor spoke dryly into her glass. She heard Erwin cough into his hand to suppress his explosive laughter.

The women continued to chatter, no one having heard Lyor's retort. Lyor remained diplomatic, but never stopped eyeing Marie and her husband from behind her champagne flute. Though there was not a single thing Lyor could fathom anyone reproaching Marie for, she felt sick every time the woman spoke.

Habitually, the young woman wasn't a jealous person, but the alcohol, and Erwin's interactions with Marie and her husband descended her into deeper and deeper levels of jealousy, until she thought the glass of champagne would shatter in her grip.

They were a solid 10 minutes into mind-numbing smalltalk when a familiar soldier tapped Erwin on the shoulder from behind. Lyor watched Mike whisper something to Erwin, and the blond excused himself.

"Excuse me, folks," Erwin flashed those perfect sets of pearly whites, and Lyor noticed every woman smile back. "My commander has asked for me. I'll be sure to make another round before the end of the night."

He offered a nod to Markus, his superior, and the rest of them bid their cheerful goodbyes. They returned to their conversation, occupying Markus with another moronic topic which he charmed his way through.

Erwin turned to leave with Mike, but not without sharing a sympathetic smile to Lyor. With her eyes following his every move, it was quite obvious she didn't want him to abandon her in this game of social politics. So, with her back now turned to the occupied crowd, Erwin took her hand in his and brought it to his face.

"Thank you for dancing with me," He spoke quietly before pressing a chaste kiss on the back of her hand. Her hand tingled at the contact, and she couldn't look away from his smiling eyes. "I look forward to you crushing more of my toes next time."

"You scouts are really full of yourself." She replied, laughing. The sound was like music to his ears.

"I'll tell the commander you said that. Goodnight, Lyor."

"Goodnight, Erwin."

And with that, the blond let go of her hand with a lingering smile. She watched him disappear into the sea of people like an abandoned puppy. Steeling herself, she turned back to the group, Markus entertaining them with yet another story about Nile's first days in the Military Police, while a group of drunken men near them began to sing along to the tune that was playing.

Lyor remained tightlipped until she felt Marie's gaze on her. As soon as she caught her attention, Marie addressed her, creating a sub-conversation within the group. Her voice was soft and even, and the dazzling smile on her face made Lyor's stomach churn. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Reichart. You wouldn't happen to be related to Wilhelm Reichart, would you?"

"Yes, he's my father," she replied flatly, but she revelled in the comforting warmth the alcohol was creating in her core.

"Marie, you're always full of surprises. How do you know him?" Markus piped in.

"Oh, I overheard commander Shadis discussing his projects with the Survey Corps with Nile a few minutes ago," She turned back to Lyor, her face as gentle as a lamb. "Your group of engineers seems to be working on some very interesting aeronautic advancements, no?"

Before Lyor could reply, another woman decided to voice her opinion on the matter. She could barely hear the remark over the drunken singing.

"You lot should just give up on those contraptions! They'll only cause accidents and waste precious resources. My husband has had enough of funding these ridiculous caprices," the woman slurred, waving a hand in the air as she spoke. Lyor felt the corner of her lip twitch into a frown, but she refrained from commenting. "You should really focus on reinforcing the walls for the poor people of Wall Rose."

"Oh, come now, Mrs. Webster," Markus, who stood beside Lyor, laughed charmingly. "So wry!"

 _The people of Wall Rose wouldn't be so poor if people like you didn't stop humanity's progress_ , Lyor kept to herself.

"No, not wry! I'm simply a realist. I've heard of so many accidents, you wouldn't believe. In fact, the most recent one happened in, oh, my, I don't remember the name of the town," she replied, and the men's chanting behind the group became so intolerable to her that she scolded after them. "Gentlemen, keep it down. I'm trying to think!"

"Don't worry, I heard that doing anything for the first time can be difficult."

Enabled by alcohol, the comment escaped Lyor, and this time, it was perfectly audible to the entire group. The nobles froze and gawked at the young woman's audacity, and Lyor found herself sweating nervously, eyes glued to the floor, unsure how to get herself out of this one. A handful of the longest seconds of her life passed, until she felt an arm wrap around her shoulders.

"Ha-ha! I told you she'd entertain us!" Markus laughed heartily, though the expressions on the nobles' faces did not change. "Shall we freshen up your drink, Lyor?"

Markus cooly excused himself and the brunette before anyone else could speak, and she felt him drag her off, a hand on the small of her back as they made their way through the crowd of people. She followed him across the room to one of the French doors that led to a balcony, and the two of them slipped out into the refreshing night air, unnoticed.

"You've got quite the tongue on you," Markus chuckled as he closed the balcony doors behind them, muting the sounds of the boisterous ball room.

"Did you bring me to see Marie on purpose?" Lyor confronted him, irked and marginally drunk.

Markus was quiet as he approached her. "I had to reciprocate; when I suggested that you and Smith dance, I didn't quite expect you two to dance through three entire songs. Were you trying to make me jealous?"

Exasperated, Lyor wanted to laugh at his arrogance. She shrugged, knowing it was best to avoid an argument with him, and took a generous swig of the champagne that was still in her hand — she would need the liquid courage now that the two of them were alone. "What can I say? Erwin is a good dance partner."

"I'm glad; I wanted you to keep a vivid memory of your last dance with another man."

 _And so the snake reveals itself._

"Your consideration is touching," Lyor sneered. She looked out over the balcony at the city lights as she drank. She continued, placing a hand on the railing, but never looked at him, "Tell me, should I also thank you for having your men _renovate_ my father's windows?"

"Well, I was worried you had forgotten about me," Markus joined her by the railing. "I'm not very patient, you see."

Lyor eyed the man for a long time before she stared back out at the sleeping city before them. The sky was clear — remarkably clear — and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse. How she wished the night could bear her problems for her. She simply wanted to go back to dancing with him — forgetting that anyone but the two of them existed and breathed. She wished Shadis had never called for him, his duty separating them from their innocent leisure.

The back of her hand still tingled from where Erwin had touched those wonderful lips of his.

Instead, she was brought to this secluded balcony with a man who had apparently made it his mission to sabotage everything that was good in her life. She had hoped to delay this impending exchange for a few more days, but alas, Markus wasn't exactly someone she could will away as a bad dream.

Dejected, she spoke bluntly, "This is not the way to make someone love you."

Markus didn't follow right away, but soon realised the inebriated girl was reflecting on their rapport.

"Love?" Markus mocked, his tone as smooth as velvet. He looked down at her, his eyelids heavier than usual, and Lyor wondered if it was from the alcohol or from something else. "My sweet thing, this isn't about love."

"Then what is this about?"

Markus searched her eyes, his smile slowly faltering. After an uncharacteristic pause, he took to peering over the balcony at the panorama before them.

"You're drunk, so let me tell you something… I was like you, once," Markus spoke without looking at her, contemplative, and Lyor listened carefully to each word. "You want to protect your friends and family. You want to protect your people."

"My people?"

He continued, ignoring her. "The people who you love and who love you back can still be wrong; they can still believe the wrong thing, still do awful things. After all, you're Eldians. But I've learned that doesn't mean their love is any less real."

She didn't say anything, realising that between the buzzing in her head and his obscure disjoints, she was having a hard time following what he was saying. _Eldians?_

He finally turned his head to her, and the look on his face perplexed her. "I want to believe that that is what humans do… Learn to love each other. You, who seems to have such a heart to love this world and everything in it, I wonder if you will eventually love me."

The way his traits were twisted in remorse frightened her beyond any wicked smile he had bestowed upon her. They stared at each other, one in turmoil, the other in reflection.

"No, you love Erwin, don't you?"

Lyor turned her gaze away, frowning through her headache. Her jaw clenched as stress and confusion tugged at her in equal measure.

"I don't wish to be unkind to you. You must see that," Markus persisted, shifting to raise his arm. With a dauntless finger, he traced his fingertip down the side of her face and tucked her hair behind her ear. "One day, you'll understand."

Lyor flinched but didn't move away, and her eyes remained focused on the sights of the sleeping city. "I think your definition of kindness is skewed, Markus; you've already hurt me."

Markus didn't say anything. He was deep in thought. It was the first time he had heard her say his name, and he liked the way it rolled off her tongue. His fingers eventually snaked into her hair, gently, and goosebumps peppered her skin. He was watching her, she knew, but in that moment, she couldn't discern whether she was his prey or his glory. Her question was left unanswered, and from the corner of her eye, she noticed his posture stiffen.

"Even after all this, your defiance rages. You even cut your hair to provoke me," Markus spoke, a smile in his voice, but Lyor gasped when she felt his grip turn into a fist, pulling her hair. He tugged, not enough to hurt her, but enough to turn her face towards him. The abrupt yank and a wave of nausea made the empty champagne glass slip from her hand, shattering on the ground.

"Do you need another example of what happens when you defy me?"

All traces of penance were erased from his face, replaced by demoralisation. As she looked into the pools of intimidation that were Markus' green eyes, she suddenly understood what it felt like to be utterly trapped. Nightmares of familiar faces stripped of their life polluted her mind, and her breath began to tremble.

Under the smouldering of his gaze, she answered through gritted teeth and wide eyes. "N-no."

"I'll take it that you accept my proposal."

A pregnant pause filled the air as Lyor gaped at the taller man, hesitating to seal her fate.

"Do I have a choice?"

His grip loosened, but Lyor's head began to spin in time with its throbs. "You learn quickly."

"Promise me you won't hurt anyone else," Lyor managed to say. His hand moved from the back of her head to cup her face. Despite the clamminess of her skin and the colour of fear in her visage, Markus watched her fire continue to broil in her eyes. It was small, but it was _her_. Perhaps in another lifetime, he knew he would've learned to appreciate it.

"You believe me to be heinous, but I'm not a liar," He brushed his thumb over her lower lip and hummed, guttural. He tilted her chin up. "Let's keep the terms to our agreement between us. Don't mistake me for a fool; l'll find out. If you lie to me…"

Lyor swallowed as he leaned into her and closed the gap between their faces. She was dizzy, and clarity began to seep away from the corners of her vision. He kissed her, his kiss feather light and delicate against her lips, and his hand creeped to the back of her neck. He smiled darkly against her mouth when he felt her shudder. Her usual wit was out the window and all she could focus on was the bits of skin his fingers touched. The warmth of his skin rippled through her in the most unpleasant way.

He pulled away, squeezing the back of her neck. His gaze left her with bated breath.

"I will take _everything_ you cherish."

* * *

Doubled over in the villa's gardens, Lyor hid from the ballroom behind a few bushes as she felt another dry heave wrack her body. She was a hell of a sight to behold; she had taken off her heeled shoes to run to the gardens faster, the little makeup she had been wearing was altogether ruined, and her dress was surely wrinkled and stained from the grass she sat in. She groaned when the wave of nausea passed, her head spinning and her chills running down her back. She was sick — not only from the copious amounts of alcohol she had consumed that evening and lack of food, but also from her repugnance to the man that had claimed her.

Markus had left her on the balcony after their interaction, but she found herself unable to rejoin the ballroom when dread and nausea had left her with a lethal chemical combination in her body. She replayed their kiss a thousand times in her head, and the sound of his infernal voice — so engrained in her mind — revolted her to her very core.

She was busy waiting for the next, unending surge of nausea to hit her when she heard a gentle voice call out.

"Ms. Reichart, are you alright?"

She turned her head, still doubled over on her knees, to spot the last person she wanted to see: Marie. She must've left the ballroom for some fresh air.

 _I'm on my knees, shoeless, throwing up in a bush, what do you think?_ She wanted to say.

"I'm fine, Mrs. Dawk. Thank you, but I'd rather you leave," Lyor responded, using all her might not to throw up in front of her. She felt like she needed to prove something to this woman, and projectile vomiting into a duke's premium bushes was not the way to obtain her goal. Lyor turned her head away from the fair lady, embarrassed to be seen in such a state.

There was a moment of contemplative silence, then footsteps in gravel, then in grass. Lyor looked to her right to see a pair of fashionable shoes and feet a few centimetres from her. Before she could look up, she heard shifting and found Marie kneeled beside her, holding out a handkerchief with a neighbourly smile, her other hand supporting her pregnant bump.

Lyor could only gawk at her kindness when she found no malice behind her eyes. For the umpteenth time that evening, she felt like the perfect jackass — letting her childish jealously cloud her judgement so deeply that she would be so boorish towards a decent woman. Though indirect, Lyor had insulted her, and yet here she was, springing to her aid. She could never live up to this woman.

Just as Lyor managed a smile, reaching out for the handkerchief, a fresh batch of vomit scrambled up her throat, and she turned away from the blonde to retch into the foliage. "Oh, God, I'm so sorry." She managed between heaves.

She felt a gentle pair of hands in her hair — a considerable contrast to the last pair that were there — as Marie held the young woman's brown locks out of her face while she was sick into the bushes.

"Don't apologise," she cooed. "There's no person better equipped to deal with vomit than a pregnant mother. I've seen so much of it that I'm immune."

Lyor laughed at that, but her giggle was interrupted by more heaving. Marie tried to hold back her laughter at the humorous symphony of Lyor's alternating gags and and laughs, but she couldn't help herself. This only fuelled Lyor's laughter, and the women found themselves in a very strange laughing fit.

After a few minutes, Lyor was feeling better, and she was wiping her mouth with Marie's handkerchief as their laughter died down. Lyor suggested moving away from the infamous bushes, and she helped the expecting mother to her feet. The two sat on a bench across the way in a comfortable silence.

"You left a very notable impression on the governesses," Marie finally broke the silence, and the brunette sheepishly laughed.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Dawk, I never meant to insult you," she admitted. "I wasn't exactly myself tonight."

"Please, it's Marie," the bewitching woman answered, offering a smile. "Is Erwin giving you trouble? I swear, that man works his people too hard."

Her remark noticeably strained their interaction, but Lyor disregarded it. "No, it's not him. I just… needed to get away from the crowd."

Marie hummed in agreement, and the silence fell upon them again. Lyor chewed the inside of her cheek in thought, wondering if she should surrender to the throbbing question that obsessed her ever since she laid eyes on Marie. The minutes passed, the serene evening sky betraying the mental battle Lyor fought.

She couldn't help herself.

"Is it true that you were involved with Erwin?" She asked, softly.

Marie turned easily to her, her quiet smile never faltering. Honey eyes searched pale blue, and Lyor felt corrupt when she found an incredible burden hidden behind Marie's gaze. Heartache, sadness, turmoil.

"It's not true."

She felt a great deal of empathy for the woman, and it only took a single glance to understand that it wasn't Lyor's place to push for any further information. She looked away, and the two contented themselves in staring at the night sky together in a silent understanding of one another. After all, there was no greater language than feminine solidarity.

Marie's next words sparked a friendship Lyor thought would never be possible

"If Duke Lichtwark asks me why those bushes are growing so much faster than the other ones, I'll tell him to look up Reichart fertilisers, okay?"

* * *

A/N: Hoes before bros, always.

There will be more Erwin in the following chapters, I'm sorry! Must. establish. basic. plot. (even though we're already on chapter 12)

As always, please let me know what you thought, comments motivate me so much! Or perhaps a favourite if you're shy! Thank you! 3


	13. Chapter 13: Compass

She tapped her pen against her drawing board as she ran a myriad of measurements in her head. Her eyes were glued to the blueprint pinned to the angled desk, and the sound of her scratching pen was the only noise that filled the room as countless calculations seeped from her pen. Glistening, the afternoon sunlight poured from the single hung windows of her work station, announcing the festive arrival of summer, and Lyor straightened her hunched back when she finished her final draft.

She stretched, her spine popping in lamentation, and looked around the room. Her teammates had all left for lunch about an hour ago, but she had decided to stay back and finish the last of their project's blueprints. She stood from her stool and walked over to the windows, rubbing her dry eyes.

Outside, she saw a few soldiers tending to the building's overgrown plants, while others were returning from their horse-riding training, chatting amongst themselves. It was a quiet summer day; warm sunlight and cool, crisp air streaming through the open window. The room was heavy with the smell of flowers, vines, grass, and growth. A comforting buzz of insects and the chirping of birds echoed in the room as Lyor peered out the window, her eyes growing out of focus. Lyor pushed a strand of her hair behind her ear, and a silver ring on her left hand glimmered in the sunlight. All was peaceful and revitalised.

All except for her.

From the third floor, she recognised her father walking across the courtyard, a briefcase in his hand. She crossed her arms over her chest and sucked in a weary breath. They hadn't spoken in weeks, and Lyor recalled their last conversation as she watched him greet a few of the soldiers outside.

 _"General Schoenberg asked me for your hand."_

 _He had announced it abruptly at the dinner table, but Lyor feigned disinterest._

 _"Oh, is that so? What did you say?"_

 _Wilhelm had not stopped eyeing her, searching for any sort of reaction that could give away her thoughts. "After I picked my mouth off the floor, I told him I had to think about it. Care to explain where this came from?"_

 _"What's there to explain? He asked me to marry him, and I said yes."_

 _"You did?"_

 _"Yes."_

 _Wilhelm frowned. "But… why?"_

 _She shrugged. "Why not?"_

 _"Why not?" Wilhelm scoffed, letting go of his cutlery and leaning back into his chair. "Is he the right man for you?"_

 _"He is; he'll provide us with security. Financially and socially. He's a general, after all, and this will open many doors for us."_

 _"I don't want you to marry someone out of social gain."_

 _"Everyone does it. What makes me so special that I can have the luxury to marry out of passion?"_

 _"Because you're self-sufficient. You don't need a husband to open doors for you; you've already opened them yourself."_

 _She didn't say anything, and continued to keep her eyes on her plate._

 _"What happens when you bear children and you're forced to stay home to take care of them? To give up your expertise? How is that opening doors for you? You're not a housewife!" He leaned into the table, his voice raising and his heart sinking when she finally looked up at him. Her eyes blazed with defiance, but he knew it only masked the turmoil within her._

 _"You say housewife as if it's some sort of_ condition _. Don't treat me as some offspring destined to carry out your name and work; whether you like it or not, I'm your daughter, not your son. Did you never expect me to marry?"_

 _"Don't be absurd. Of_ course _I expected you to marry, eventually, but not like this. Not to someone so incompatible."_

 _It was Lyor's turn to scoff. "Incompatible?! You're not my matchmaker! How would you know who is compatible for me and who is not?"_

 _"I can't let you throw away your life like this, Lyor! This man won't further you! I know there's some deep-seated reason for all of this, and you have got to stop rejecting all the people willing to help you out of it before you do something irreversible!"_

 _Another silence coiled around them like a snake as the echo of Wilhelm's displeased bellow faded. Lyor put down her fork, her eyes lowering to her plate. Wilhelm spoke again, but the silence had softened him, and he practically supplicated, "What about Erwin? Don't you care for him at all?"_

 _Lyor's wide eyes darted. "That's none of your business!"_

 _"No, I suppose you've become too proud to listen to me anymore," Wilhelm said after a while, before he stood from his seat, abandoning his half-eaten dinner. He had lost his appetite. "I'm disappointed in you, Lyor."_

 _She felt her stomach drop, and her brows raised, pleading as her father walked out of the room. "Father, I—"_

 _"I'll accept his proposal, but keep me out of the rest of your plans."_

Markus had presented a ring to her within the following days. Lost in thought, she found herself fiddling with said ring by the window. The past few weeks had been surreal to her, but she had once again buried herself in her work. She pressed her lips together, miffed, and pointedly turned her gaze away from the window when the door opened. She spotted a familiar young man, a couple of years younger than her, carrying a rather impressive-looking crate through the door, and he stopped to blink at her in surprise.

"Oh, Ms. Reichart. Good afternoon. I thought you'd be gone for lunch; I'm sorry to disturb you." He greeted her as he set down the wooden crate on her desk, unknowingly knocking over a few items.

She smiled politely and approached him as he began sifting through the stacks of letters in the crate. She bent down to gather the dried bouquet of wild thyme he had knocked over, and smiled sadly at the granules of crackled petals that had broken off the ends from the fall. She had carefully hung the bouquet to dry from the safest corner of her desk, unable to discard the wilting flowers.

"Are you still stuck on mail duty, Farlan?" She asked the recent soldier as she returned the bouquet to its proper place.

"Yeah, all of the new recruits are on the same rotation until the end of summer. But I don't mind it, really; it gives me a chance to meet people. And at least I'm not on stable duty like Isabel," The sandy blond chortled, and handed Lyor a stack of letters. "Here's your mail."

She thanked him and took the stack as he busily sorted through the rest of the squad's letters. She watched him eye the mountains of notes and rolls of blueprints overflowing from every person's desk, presumably wondering where the hell he would find room for their mail, and she almost laughed.

Lyor made her way toward the door with her handful of mail, wanting to avoid her father's arrival in the squad's station. She told the younger soldier she was going out for some fresh air, and the two bid each other goodbye.

Expertly avoiding her father, Lyor took a detour through the halls to find herself in the courtyard where she spotted a tree to sit under a few meters away from the courtyard itself. As she grew nearer, she curiously noticed a pair of boots from behind the tree.

She walked at an angle to spot someone already sitting under the shade of the oak tree, surrounded by a small stack of bound paperwork and books, a half-eaten apple in his left hand, a pen in his right, as he pored over a document. He had taken off his jacket due to the heat, and had folded it neatly beside him, the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up. She grinned, slid the silver curse off of her ring finger, and stuffed it in her dress pocket.

"Hello, captain. Can I interest you in a sick day?"

Erwin looked up, keeping his index on the last word he had read as to not lose his spot, and was pleasantly surprised to find Lyor poking her head around the tree. He smiled back at her as she took a seat on the patch of shady grass near his outstretched legs, smoothing her dress under her as she sat to face him, two feet away. He put his paper down, welcoming the much needed break.

"What are you insinuating?" He replied, lightheartedly.

"Well, you're the one who told me not to eat and work at the same time. And yet," she smirked playfully. "Here I find you, banished from your office, in a sea of paperwork, villainous comestible in hand. Either you're a terrible role model, or you're in need of a day off."

"There's no rest for the wicked," he retorted with a smirk of his own. "Nor any offices that don't face the east. My office is a sauna this time of day; I thought I'd work out here."

"I heard Shadis' office has that perfect southern exposure. Maybe you should try to get promoted."

That got a laugh out of him, and he watched her peruse through the letters she held in her hands as they smiled. "My, aren't you popular?"

She flipped through the letters, even disregarding some. To avoid going back home, Lyor had instructed the post office to forward all of her mail to the barracks, where she had been staying for the past three weeks.

"No, they're mostly distant relatives congratulating me on my enga—," she cursed herself for speaking carelessly, and she aptly lied through her teeth. "Graduation."

She looked up at Erwin to see if he had caught the slip of her tongue, and to her relief, he was looking indifferent. Lyor didn't want to discuss this with him; she wasn't looking for his opinion or his analysis of the situation. All she wanted to do was sit with him under this tree, and simply be. But Erwin, sharp as a whip, hadn't missed a single beat.

Lyor looked down at her letters, opening one. "I received a few letters from Marie, too."

Erwin felt an emotion midway between antipathy and suspicion stir in him, and his thick brows furrowed. "As in Marie Dawk?"

As if it was the most normal thing in the world, she nodded dismissively, her eyes reading the lines of a dainty letterhead.

His mouth hung slightly open as he watched her, searching for a way to ask her why in the world she was Marie's penpal, but instead, he gave up and leaned his back into the tree trunk, suddenly feeling overworked. This woman was never quite what she seemed; it was the little things about her that always caught him off guard.

"I wasn't aware of your intimacy." He admitted.

"What, are you jealous?" The way her lips coiled into a smirk and the velvety tease in her voice made his skin prickle, enticing him. He remained outwardly placid, but his face became very hot, to which he stubbornly chalked up to the intense summer heat.

"You engineers are really full of yourselves." He retorted, imitating her. She grinned.

They fell into a comfortable silence, Erwin returning to his work as she caught up on her correspondence. Under their tree, the summer wind caressed their skin, carrying ambrosial wafts of the forests surrounding the scouts' HQ, and Lyor could feel her heartache simultaneously growing and melting away in the blond's presence. She wanted to be with him; enjoying the small leisures of life, as simple as sitting under a tree on a hot day, exchanging smiles and banter. The mere proximity of his being, sharing the precious silence with him, filled her heart with cheer. He was her source of excitement, and of comfort.

But every moment she spent with him, they were only growing a moment apart; the weight in her pocket served as a reminder of that.

She stole a lingering glance at the lionhearted scout when she though he wasn't looking, and traced the ray of sunshine that kissed the skin of his cheek through the leaves — chaste and celestially — as he studied a book, taking notes. This was the Erwin she loved; submerged in his element, elegant browline pulled into a studious fix, and his fingers entangled in the pages of a book. He reminded her of a marble statue of Apollo she had once seen at the university — god of light, and of knowledge. The role suited him quite well, she thought.

Quashing the image of her lips on his cheek, she averted her eyes to the pile of books that were stacked beside him, their spines turned towards her. She curiously read the title of a book that seemed out of place amongst the military manuals, and her heart fluttered. _Léviathan_ sat at the bottom of the stack, a book she had recommended to him in the not-so-distant past. She bit back a giddy grin and returned to her letters. The two of them shared the better part of the afternoon together, alternating between serene lulls and pleasant conversation.

While Erwin was engrossed in his work, Lyor was in the middle of reading the eighth letter congratulating her and Markus when she heard someone calling her name from the courtyard. She stood, worried by his expression, and waved her squad mate Abel over to the tree. He approached hurriedly, rounding the tree, as she moved to meet him.

"Lyor! There you are! And captain Smith!" He tried to catch his breath as Erwin stood from his spot, his eyes fixed on the young man. His tone of voice made both of them uneasy. "It's Heinrich… I'm afraid that… he's succumbed to his injuries."

She gasped, anguish seizing her.

He continued, his face glistening with sweat, "Lyor, you need to come right away. Before we even knew about it, the military police arrived to arrest Wilhelm."

"What?!" She nearly fell over at his words. Abel turned to his commanding officer, imploring his guidance.

"They're currently ransacking our office, and they won't tell us what's going on."

Erwin, as imperturbable as ever, threw his jacket on and began assembling his belongings. His voice was fearless, while Lyor's mind was unravelling from the news. "Where is he?"

"I don't know, sir. They've already taken him away."

"Has the commander been notified?"

"I'm not sure, sir."

After only a few seconds of thought, while he tucked his belongings under his arm, he answered, "Call for an emergency meeting and gather all of the squad leaders. Send for brigadier general Schoenberg if he's not already here."

"Yes, sir!" Abel saluted the officer before running off to execute his commands.

Meanwhile, Lyor could only stare at Abel's receding figure, adrenaline and dismay washing over her in waves. Everything was moving too fast. Erwin's commanding voice snapped her head out of her confusion, and she looked at him.

"Lyor, regroup with your squad at their station. Find Rick. If you get there before Abel, get Hanji as well. Stay levelheaded; make sure things don't get out of hand, and meet me at the emergency meeting with them," He put a hand on her shoulder. "We'll mourn for Heinrich, but we won't have to mourn your father if we work quickly with the brigade."

The way he looked down at her, with the bluest shade of resolve, rekindled her endurance. She nodded, determined to face this adversity with fortitude, for her father's sake.

"Yes, sir."

He squeezed her shoulder in solidarity before he was on his way back to the main building, and she ran past him, branching the other way to her squad's location. When she got to the hallway leading to the station, her mouth fell open at the spectacle: dozens of MP soldiers were bustling about, carrying out boxes and crates full of documents, papers, and books outside, like a colony of ants. She heard shouting from afar, and swallowed the urge to tell them to stop. The soldiers made a point to ignore Lyor as she sifted through them in the hallway, towards the shouting, and she finally arrived to the room she had been in only a few hours prior.

She inhaled sharply at the sight of their vandalised office; papers and projects thrown carelessly on every inch of the floor as a handful of soldiers packed them in boxes. Having been knocked to the floor, she grit her teeth at the sound of her delicate dried bouquet of thyme crunching under an MP's boot. He barked for her to move out of the doorway, and she obliged.

She spotted Rick, source of all the shouts, in the corner of the room as the soldier passed her. He was arguing with another officer. Keiji and Nifa stood beside him, demanding that he calm himself, but it only seemed to result in more yelling.

Lyor gingerly made her way across the room, trying her best to not step on anything and to avoid the invading officers.

"Is everyone alright?" She asked when she reached the group, and they turned to her. Momentarily letting the MP he was verbally eviscerating out of his sight, Rick snarled at her in response.

"These bastards barged in here without notice and ordered us to stand aside as they raided our office! Without any explanation!" He turned to gesture to the officer packing up his possessions, only to find him halfway out the door. "Hey! Get back here, you son a —"

"Control yourself, Rick!" Nifa grabbed his arm to prevent him from pursuing the officer. "Until we know what's going on, we have to stay calm."

"We know 'what's going on', Nifa. They arrested Wilhelm and they're going to blame Heinrich's death on him! They're going to use this as a reason to scrap all of our projects, keep all of our designs locked away from us as 'evidence', and maybe even find a way to use this as propaganda against the Legion!" Rick hollered, snatching her arm away from the shorter girl. "So you'll have to excuse me if I can't find an ounce of diplomacy in me, lieutenant, but given the current situation, I don't really give a rat's ass!"

"I'm only trying to stop you from getting arrested yourself, you blockhead!" Nifa yelled back at him, but Rick only reacted by burying his hands in his hair and pacing the room, unhinged.

Lyor steeled herself when he turned to her. If there were a few things Lyor had learned about Rick over the years, it was he hated people touching his property, and the military.

"I saw this coming, too, you know! The _instant_ the army meddled in our affairs, I knew this was all going to go to shit! But, no! Everyone's kind, and everyone's true in Lyor's perfect world! Let's all be buddies with the lunatics over in the Scouting Legion, and get your father arrested in the process!" He laughed, a mix of sarcasm and hysteria. He turned to Keiji, who was glowering at him. "Just do me a favour: when they come for me next, I don't want you attending my funeral, okay?"

"I have to. The murderer always needs to show up to throw off the police." Keiji spat.

"Rick, I need you to shut your mouth while you can still use it," Lyor seethed, her brows knitting at her delirious comrade as he continued pacing. "We've been summoned to an emergency meeting, so pull yourself together."

"What, so they can feed us another lie? Or maybe they'll have us sit in a circle and give them suggestions about which blueprints to steal!" The man threw his arms in the air.

"Rick." Lyor pressed, knowing he was losing it.

He bent over, ignoring her and picking up a stack of papers, waving it about, mockingly, as he spoke in an affected accent, "Oh, pick this one, please! It's even got satanical drawings of King Fritz you can use in court! Pieces of pompous shit! I'm staying right here so I can beat the living shit out of th —"

Rick was interrupted by Lyor's hand grabbing his wrist, and when he looked down at her, he sucked in a breath at the tears swelling in her eyes.

"I know you're upset about Heinrich, but he was my friend, too," She had trouble speaking, her voice trembling, but she stared at him earnestly and blinked back her tears. "And now they're going to take my father away from me as well. I'm barely holding it together, Rick, and I don't think I could bear it if they took you, too. Please."

He'd seen her angry, seen her disgusted, even terrified, but he'd never seen her cry. The sight made him simmer down. He averted his eyes, and he shook off her hand. "Well if you're going to cry about it…"

She'd also learned that behind his temper, Rick was a fiercely loyal friend. Refusing to cry, Lyor took a contemplative breath before turning to Nifa and Keiji, thanking them for their efforts. She told them they'd be back soon with Hanji, and with more information. With that, the two engineers made their way out of the room and through the hallways, without a word, towards Shadis' meeting room.

When they arrived, they found all the squad leaders sitting in their respective seats, whispering quietly amongst themselves around a long conference table. Documents, maps, and charting materials were spread onto the table, but Lyor noticed there were several empty seats yet to be filled. Commander Shadis hadn't arrived yet, and she didn't spot any military police officers.

Lyor and Rick sat across from Hanji, and the latter offered the two engineers a compassionate smile, but they didn't have time to exchange any words as Shadis entered the room. Everyone stood, and the soldiers saluted him as he entered, followed by Erwin, a handful of MP officers, and Markus. The heavy, double doors were shut behind him, and everyone took a seat, Shadis and Markus sitting at either heads of the table. An unfamiliar MP sat to Lyor's right, placing a stack of documents in front of him.

The air was heavy with tension as Shadis called a start to the meeting, Erwin sitting adjacently to him. "As you all know by now, one of our engineers has died this afternoon. Shortly after, our head engineer was taken into custody by the interior police. I think I speak for every scout here when I say that I would like to know what in the world is going on, general."

Markus sat tall and coolly at the other end of the table, his eye contact with Shadis unwavering as he asked for one of his men to read out the charges. Lyor, too worried she would lose her composure, refused to look him in the eye. Nervously, she took the charting compass that was before her on the table, and fiddled with it.

A few seats down from her, a soldier stood, a document in his hand as he recited:

"The crown hereby accuses Wilhelm Reichart for violating clauses three, twelve, seventeen, and twenty-one of the Humanity Charter: adventuring beyond the Walls without proper documentation or approval, conducting unauthorised research and development of dangerous devices, smuggling illegal paraphernalia from unapproved vendors, and, forthwith of Gert Heinrich's death, involuntary manslaughter. The crown hereby orders an immediate halt to all research, in which all project documentation will be seized by the royal crown to be inspected for further evidence. Reichart, apprehended the twenty-third of June of 844, will be brought before a Justice of the Supreme Court at a Trial Term, Part One thereof, to answer for his disobedience. In the event of validation of seized documentation, Reichart will face the according punishment of lifetime imprisonment."

The world around her seemed to abruptly stop, and the clatter of Rick's chair plunging to the ground as he pounced in outrage only sounded muted in her ears. Rick was shouting furiously while other officers shouted back at him, but none of the words were processing in her mind. She was inwardly collapsing, and all she could do was raise her eyes to Markus.

Markus, that shit monger of a parasite disguised as a comely officer… She didn't understand; she had done everything he'd asked. He had promised. Sternly, he was watching the outbreak of hysterics between his men and Rick, commanding everyone to sit back down. As she watched him through the commotion, she dismally understood that Rick had been right: all of this had been a set up, and she had played straight into his hands. Her own hand balled into a fist around the charting compass.

"Look, it brings me no joy to announce this, but orders are orders," Markus sighed, glaring at an infuriated Rick. "His sentence is only dependent on what we find in the documentation. If he has nothing illegal to hide, he'll be released."

"Released?! The last time someone was released by the interior police, the walls were still being built!" Cried Rick, his hands spread on the table as he stood. He was right, and Lyor knew her father wouldn't even have a lifetime to carry out his sentence; the interior police wouldn't waste a cell space for the likes of a mere civilian. He would be tortured, then executed. It was a simple fact.

Ignoring the useless argument, Markus continued, directing his speech to Shadis, "All authorised projects and research will resume once all evidence has been investigated."

"How long do you estimate the investigation to be?" That steady, even voice steered her out of her clouded misery like a lighthouse, and her eyes dragged over to Erwin's person. Poised and unemotional, he confidently spoke across the table to Markus.

The man beside her interjected with a loud laugh. She looked over at him to find him holding what seemed to be a letter in the butterballs that were his dumpy hands, and she quickly recognised the handwriting to be her father's. She could only assume the pile of papers in front of the soldier was part of the evidence they had reaped from the squad's office.

"From what I can see, captain Smith, I can assure you it will take us no time at all," the lumpish man uttered, an inglorious smirk slapped on his face. "I mean, who writes letters to their dead wife? We've got all the evidence we need right in these silly postcards."

Having never been introduced to the pinhead beside her, he wouldn't have known she was Wilhelm's daughter, and she wanted to laugh. Instead, she gripped the charting compass in her hand so tightly that she wasn't surprised when she felt her nails breaking the flesh of her palm.

"No, colonel, it depends on the quantity of the project material. Ms. Reichart," Markus addressed her, and she reluctantly looked at him; the crook had to audacity to smile at her. "I'd say about three weeks to go through everything. What do you think?"

* * *

With her back to the rolling hills of the HQ's fields, Lyor stood before a pond, surrounded by a thicket of trees, her gaze vacant and her fingers still loosely curled around the charting tool. The sun warmed her clammy skin, and the wind whispered peacefully through her hair.

She thought about Heinrich, the whimsical man that had built his granddaughter her very first bicycle from scratch. She thought about how his glasses had made him look like a bug, and remembered how hard everyone had laughed when Hanji had tried them on. She thought about how lifeless and terrorised his body had looked on the hangar floor.

She placed the charting compass in her pocket, and felt a familiar piece of silver against her fingers. She pulled it out, and stared at the ring in her hand.

She thought about her father; how she could very well never see him again, and if it was the case, how their relationship would end with a fight. Her father, the man who had taught her everything he knew, who had confided in her, and who had loved her and her mother more than life itself, would likely die never knowing how much _she_ loved _him_.

All for a broken promise.

Rage swept through her body like a wave; first her toes toes curled, her fists clenching, then her shoulders rose, and her teeth grit until her teeth practically split under the pressure. Ugly, angry tears fell from beneath her furrowed brows. She drew her arm behind her, and with a livid scream, she hurled the ring as hard as she possibly could into the air. She didn't get a chance to hear the ring land in the water, for she fell to her knees, taking fistfuls of grass beneath her and breaking down into wild, angry sobs.

She sat, wailing and crying her eyes out into the wind, praying that all of this was just some sick, cosmic joke.

She wasn't sure how long she sat there, but her crying dwindled to quivering breaths when she heard soft footsteps behind her in the grass. She turned to see Erwin, but almost immediately turned back around, wiping her tears and the unsavoury snot from her face with her hand. She stood, dusting off the dirt from her dress, and straightened to face him, as if she hadn't just lost control of every ounce of composure in her person.

As per usual, she couldn't discern what he was thinking, his expression neutral. She cleared her throat and offered a polite smile. "I was just on my way back."

He didn't say anything. She nodded, the feigned smile lingering on her lips as she started walking past him to return to the barracks, but he stopped her. His hand had caught hers, and she turned to him, startled.

"Tell me what it is that devours you, or you will continue to suffer."

Her eyes fixated on the rise and fall of his even breath, and she asked herself if the universe was making up for the misfortune it had burdened her with by sending her a guardian angel. As hard as she tried to bite it back, his words, the feel of his skin, and the electricity of his touch released a fresh batch of tears.

They spilled uncontrollably from her eyes, and her hand went over her mouth as she blubbered, "I can't, I can't. I can't let them take you, too."

She felt him pull her a bit closer, his hand tightening, and the motion mimicked the insistence in his voice, "Who, Lyor? Who's they?"

She only sobbed harder, now bringing her hand to over her entire face as she weeped, screwing her eyes shut. Wistfully, he watched her cry, and his grip loosened but he didn't release her hand. They stood there for a few moments until her cries tapered off. Whimpering, she tried to wipe away her tears, but she didn't meet his eyes. She felt pathetic.

"I need my hand," was all she could think to mutter through her blubbering hiccups.

He laughed sadly. "Will you take off if I let go?"

"Yes." She sulked.

His hand tightened around hers before he took a single step towards her, closing the gap between them. He pulled their interlaced hands to his strong chest, and she looked up at her dear friend, perplexed. Before she could react, he embraced her, encircling her into the refuge of his arms. He was warm, his scent lush and inviting, and his being — his body — suddenly consumed her every thought. Almost instinctively, her hands circled around his middle, clinging to him like a parched child, and tears began to sting her eyes again. She nuzzled her tearstained face into his chest to hide from the world that perhaps didn't hate her as much as she'd thought.

With his cheek pressed against her temple, he whispered yearningly into her ear, "Then I won't let go."

* * *

A sardonic laugh escaped her, and she felt Rick's eyes on her. Her breath caught in her throat, her voice came out barely above a whisper. "What do I think, General Schoenberg?"

Something in her snapped. Her hand moved on its own accord, and the wail of the man beside her resounded like a whimpering dog.

She looked down at the table and found that she had speared the charting compass directly through the officer's hand.

* * *

A/N: Alright, so I had a HELLA hard time with this chapter. Do you ever have a perfect outline prepared, and all of a sudden, it seems like your characters take over and make you write what they want? Yeah, so that happened 4-5 times with this, and I found myself having to start over this ENTIRE chapter multiple times. OTL Good times, but at least I managed to follow my outline. I also couldn't find the English equivalent of "tout le monde il est beau, il est gentil" when Rick tells Lyor that everyone is perfect in her world, so that kind of backfired, but fucK IT WE'RE GOInG LIVe.

So anyways... PLOT TWIIIIIIIIST also Erwin is Apollo, change my mind.

Also apologies for super long chapter : I hope it doesn't drag.

You know the drill, folks! Comment, fav, send a pizza to my apartment. 3

BlueSnap, Thank you so much for your encouragement! Your comments give me so much motivation! Let me know what you thought of this chapter, yeah? Cheers!


	14. Chapter 14: Bullet

"Here's the file you asked for," Mike placed the document on Erwin's desk. "It's all Mitras could send us; they're quite stingy with personnel files."

Without looking up from his work, Erwin nodded, placing the file onto the stack of papers that was on his desk. "Thanks, Mike."

Mike took a seat in one of the chairs before his squad leader's desk, folded his hands over his stomach, and swung his feet onto the other chair, using it as his footstool. He leisurely sunk into the seat, and eyed the blond. As per usual, Mike found Erwin's concentration unshakable as he examined the file he had handed him.

"Found anything yet?" Mike offered after silently observing him for a few minutes.

"No, Markus keeps close tabs on what's made public about him, but that only confirms my suspicions," Erwin answered, pulling out a piece of paper to make notes on the file. Never looking at his friend, he continued, "And the engagement?"

Mike continued to stare. "Standard run-of-the-mill engagement; he proposed, she accepted, father gave his blessing."

Seemingly indifferent, Erwin hummed in acknowledgement as he jotted down his thoughts. Mike noticed the faint stubble peppering the blond's jaw, and it made him suspect that Erwin had stayed up all night working again. There was a long silence between them before Mike finally permitted himself to voice his thoughts.

"You seem stressed."

"A very important man's life in is my hands."

Mike paused. "And woman's?"

Erwin's pen stopped mid-sentence. Only his eyes moved to glower icily at the taller man sitting across from him. He found him staring back with a wily smirk.

Mike tapped his nose knowingly. "Hide it all you want; your pheromones can't lie."

Erwin stared at him for a moment longer before he eventually let out a weary sigh. Discarding his pen, Erwin leaned back into his desk chair, stretching the ache in his writing hand. He was exhausted.

Three weeks had elapsed since Wilhelm's arrest, and Erwin had devoted the entirety of his spare time to unmasking something — anything — behind the interior police's motives. He had brought Wilhelm into this mess, and he was responsible for getting him out of it. It wasn't that he felt as if he was at fault for anything, but the Scouting Legion's technological advancement depended on Wilhelm's survival. Moreover, it didn't help Erwin's conscious — albeit stunted — that Wilhelm had been one of his father's good friends in the past. He owed it to his father's ghost, and perhaps to Lyor as well.

"Yes, I suppose I can't hide that sort of thing from you." He admitted, a plaintive smile offered to the observant man across from him. "But regardless, this whole plight isn't sitting well with me."

Losing his smirk, Mike pressed, "Is she really going to marry him?"

"I don't know. She doesn't exactly confide in me."

"Doesn't feel so good when it's done to you, does it?"

Erwin ignored the antiphon, occupying his hands by tidying up the work on his desk. "In any case, we need to bail Wilhelm out of jail. I need you to travel to the Underground city again. See if Schoenberg's name holds any weight there; it should uncover some leads if it does."

"What are you going to do when we find something on him?"

He felt the corners of his lips start to curl at the question. Erwin's exhaustion overcame him, and a wicked grin — one he ordinarily would have muzzled — grew upon his face.

"What I do best."

Mike's eyebrow raised in both curiosity and astonishment. _I haven't seen that look in a long time._ The squad leader returned to his work as if nothing had perturbed him, and his friend continued to study him warily.

"Boy, you really like this girl." He finally chortled under his breath.

Before the two men could continue their repartee, there was a knock on Erwin's door, and he granted their entrance. Hanji shut the door behind her.

"The coach is here, Erwin."

Nodding, he wished his squad member good luck, and packed up his belongings.

* * *

It took them two hours to reach the Stohess district, and Erwin watched Hanji stretch her aching back as they got out of the carriage. After paying the driver for his time, the two scouts made their way up the steps of the Military Police HQ, where they were greeted and escorted by three officers that had been waiting for their arrival.

"Where's Lyor? I thought she wanted to see Wilhelm as soon as they allowed for visits," Erwin asked Hanji as they walked. She shrugged.

"I told her we were going today, but she said she had mandatory 3DMG training," Erwin raised an eyebrow at her. "Hey, don't ask me. Besides asking to borrow a pair of my boots and gear, she didn't mention any details about it to me."

Erwin frowned but didn't press the subject any further.

As they made their way down the halls and up a few staircases, the leading MP officer reiterated a handful of rules they were to follow when visiting Mr. Reichart. No physical contact, no disorderly behaviour, and adherence to mandatory supervision. As if these were things the scouts didn't already know.

The lead officer explained they would make a pit stop in general Schoenberg's office to complete paperwork concerning the visit, and that he would fill in for Schoenberg. Erwin duly noted Markus' absence when the officer mentioned that the general was out of town on some sort of business.

Behind the MP officers, his mind wandered as he walked beside Hanji. He thought about the last time he had seen Lyor. Overloaded with work, he recalled he hadn't spoken to her since the day of Wilhelm's arrest, and his thoughts threatened to drift to the sensation of her soft hair against his cheek when he had held her close to him.

He caught himself before he could even visualise the colour of her hair, and he thought about the only time he had seen her over the past three weeks. He had spotted her from his window sitting outside of the stables, her clothes soiled from the work she had put in for the day. She had looked miserable, joylessly eating her ration cracker like a pouting child, and he would have laughed in different circumstances; as punishment for her misconduct displayed at the meeting a few days prior, Shadis had ordered six months of full-time menial labour.

Ordinarily, her offence against the MP officer would've landed her in jail, but being a civilian left in shock over her father's sudden arrest with no awareness of basic military conduct, the state had agreed to let Shadis decide her punishment as he saw fit. At least, that was the way Erwin and Hanji had presented it to the supreme court.

He expression fell, deprecating the physical absence of his support for her. He hoped she knew that he was fighting for Wilhelm, and he silently wished that she hadn't spiralled into the abyss of depression since he had last spoken to her. But as much as he wanted to succumb to his impulses, Erwin knew he had to focus on what was in front of him. He was here to find a way to work around the hand he had been dealt by the interior police, and he could not permit any bias in his trade. He had never tolerated any abstractions, and he wasn't about to now.

They approached Schoenberg's office, and the MP's hand reached out for the office door while Erwin and Hanji waited patiently behind him.

All of a sudden, the door to the general's office opened from the inside, and the MP officer yelped in surprise. Upon the door closing behind them, Erwin came face to face in the hallway with Rick and Lyor.

His eyes widened. Both of them were dressed in Military Police uniforms.

* * *

 _Two weeks ago_

"Hey, you! We haven't seen you around in a while," Hanji exclaimed as Lyor took a seat beside her in the mess hall with her meal, across from Moblit and Rashad. "Fincke is really stickin' it to you, isn't he?"

With a fatigued sigh, Lyor nodded and picked up her cutlery. "Well, he's been in charge of the stables for years. He's very picky about how we do things… But he found it in his heart to let me eat in the mess hall today."

"There's nothing like shovelling horse shit all day, every day, to make someone pity you!" Rashad added, only to be elbowed in the ribs by Moblit.

"Rashad, please! We're eating."

Lyor managed a small smile at her squad's bickering. She felt relieved to sit amongst her comrades again after an endless week of labour; she had barely seen any of them. Her disposition had been understandably morose, given the circumstances: her father had now been incarcerated for a week, her title as engineer had been stripped and suspended, Heinrich had been buried six days ago, and she hardly had any time to digest her situation with the constant work she had been assigned. If anything, she had been overjoyed to learn that Markus had left to a northern part of Wall Rose for the month, on business, signifying that her father's court date would be postponed until his return. In fact, she hadn't seen him since the day she had put a compass through his officer's hand.

Lyor had been wracking her mind for her next course of action since that very day. With Markus afield, she felt even more resolve to seize any opportunity to foil the MP's accusations against her father. An entire week had already passed, and with every pound of manure she shovelled, with every new stain of God knows what on her clothes from kitchen duty, the cogs in her head turned impatiently, but she only found herself more and more desperate as her ideas came out blank.

She knew Erwin and Hanji had been hard at work finding a solution of some kind, but Lyor felt she needed to take these matters into her own hands at this point. Between the Legion's recent return from their twenty-third expedition and his regular duties, she hadn't seen Erwin since that notable day; she knew he was busy with the troops' recovery from the losses they had suffered. It wasn't that she particularly distrusted Erwin, but she was going to do her part to move things along. Knowing that the situation had escalated to such levels due to her own choices, her father's fate was her responsibility, and hers only.

Lyor expressed, finding a lull in their conversation to speak frankly, "I'm happy you all made it back from the expedition." They all smiled.

"We are, too. A lot of us weren't so lucky this time around." Hanji answered somberly.

"I know… So many new recruits died," Moblit said, his tone matching the brunette's. "We also lost squad leader Flagon."

Rashad added, "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think his entire squad was wiped out save for the new guy… What's his name again?"

"Levi," Hanji said. The engineer beside her raised an eyebrow.

"Levi? The short guy with dark, clipped hair?"

"Yes, " the squad leader turned to her curiously. "Oh, that's right. Levi was also assigned stable duty as punishment."

Lyor recalled her first day at the stables. After having been handed a shovel, a bucket, and a lengthy monologue by squad leader Fincke, she had spotted a soldier quietly tending to the horses' stables by himself. He was a few years older than her, yet shorter, and after she had attempted to greet him — being only responded to with a halfhearted grunt of his name — she had understood that they would spend their stable duty together in silence. In truth, she had preferred it this way.

"Punishment for what?"

"You don't know?" Rashad scoffed. "He was after Erwin's life." Lyor's eyes widened.

"We don't really know the details, but apparently he and his friends joined the Legion to assassinate Erwin," Hanji explained. "But Erwin already knew about it, and they came to some sort of agreement after both of his friends died on the expedition."

She couldn't help but feel heavyhearted at the news. "How awful…"

Rashad poked his fork in the air as he spoke, "Yeah, but the runt is moving up the ranks already. Something about being humanity's strongest."

"I thought that was supposed to be Mike," Moblit argued.

She drowned out their conversations as the three argued about who was stronger, and finished her meal. She quietly meditated on the piece of information she had been given.

The next day, Lyor arrived at the stables to find Levi had arrived before her, as per usual. He acknowledged her with a small nod, and she did the same before they both went their silent, separate ways. He was stacking hay in individual stables, so she took it upon herself to start scrubbing the stone path separating the rows of stalls. Bucket of water and broom in hand, she coated the path in water and began rubbing at the tiles with the broom.

It was barely 6AM, and the sun was just starting to glimmer through the morning dew, donning the surroundings with an ethereal morning glow. Lyor absentmindedly watched the birds flit from tree to tree as she scrubbed away, enjoying the distraction the morning offered her, away from her thoughts. Before she knew it, she reached the next patch of dry, dirty tiles, and she bent down to pick up the bucket of water, distrait by the scenes of nature. As she bent forward, her foot slipped on the muddy stone tile beneath her, and she found herself on her ass, bucket of grimy water having spilled all over her clothes.

"Ugh, great!" She griped, peeling away the wet part of her shirt from her skin. She cringed at the feeling of the wet fabric, plastering itself to her side as she eventually needed to let go to stand herself up.

"Moron," She heard Levi mutter after she had picked herself off the ground. She looked to see him approaching her from the stable's entrance, a broom of his own in his hand. "What kind of idiot woman are you? Don't you know you should work backwards when you're scrubbing tiles? If you stand on the tiles you've just cleaned, you'll get them dirty, _and_ you'll slip and fall on your ass like a dunce."

Lyor didn't say anything, but she exhaled pointedly, sticking her nose high in the air to glare at him through hooded eyes. He started to scrub over the tiles she hadn't finished, and she opened her mouth to protest.

"Go put on a clean shirt before Fincke gets here," Levi didn't even bother to look at her when he spoke, his motions quick and precise as he cleaned. "You'll get both of us in trouble if that tight-ass sees you like that. I'll finish this up so we don't get chewed out."

She paused to wonder if he was doing this out of necessity or out of kindness. He didn't seem like the type who cared about being chewed out, so she decided to go with the latter, and her temper deflated.

"Thanks, Levi," she muttered, turning to start her sprint back to the barracks. However, she couldn't help but speak what went through her mind during the instant of his rare good will. "Hey."

Levi looked up at her from his work, straightening to his full height. "What, you need an engraved invitation or something?"

She ignored him, "I'm sorry about Isabel and Farlan; I heard what happened. I didn't know the girl, but Farlan was a really nice kid."

He stared back at her, and as much as she wanted to extend her sympathies — suffering from a loss herself — his slender features were unreadable. She settled on flickering a small smile his way before she turned on her heels to head back to the barracks.

Later that day, the two had sat on the periphery of the stables for their lunch break instead of the mess hall, as per Fincke's request — Lyor on a bench to the left of the main entrance door, while Levi sat to the right. They were both sitting in their traditional silence, eating their respective ration crackers. She was really starting to prefer running on an empty stomach rather than eating the flavourless ration. She had to hand it to Shadis though; he sure knew how to punish his men.

Lyor, inattentive to her surroundings as she absently observed a squirrel run up a tree, didn't notice the footsteps of an approaching officer. She only looked up when he spoke her name, and found one of Shadis' men handing her a paper and pen.

"Here," the soldier spoke. "The commander has ordered additional evening shifts cleaning the men's bathroom after you've finished your day at the stables. Sign it."

Lyor had trouble suppressing her displeasure, and she snatched said paper from the man's hands with a gnarl. She scrawled her signature, not one bit concerned by the sloppy handwriting, and thrust the paper back to the soldier wordlessly. He left, and she sunk in her seat, begrudgingly crunching through the last of her cracker with a frown.

She wasn't sure how long she spent glaring daggers at the dirt by her feet until Levi spoke, "For a civilian, they sure stuck you with a lot of punitive chores. You must've royally fucked up."

She idly glanced at him: he sat with a leg crossed over his other as he picked off pieces of his ration to chew. He looked back at her, completely disinterested. Finally, she laughed sourly as they both ended up looking away.

"I stabbed a military police officer through the hand," she stated flatly. As she expected, he didn't answer with anything. Eyes on a bird that approached the crumbs at her feet, she rambled morbidly, "They arrested my father for disobeying the government for several consecutive years. Apparently, they were finally able to arrest him after finding evidence. They're going to investigate said evidence before they formally announce his sentence and wrongfully send him to rot in a cell. Or maybe he'll be tortured to death before he gets a chance to rot, who knows?"

"I didn't ask for your life story."

Lyor wanted to laugh bitterly, but she couldn't find the mental energy to even move her facial muscles. Instead, she watched another bird land by the first one, and peck at its eye over the last crumb by her booted foot. There was a lengthy, brooding silence between them until Levi spoke again.

"Why don't you just get rid of the evidence if that's all they're basing his judgement on?"

Lyor's head snapped in his direction, and she eyed the raven-haired man to see if he was joking. He wasn't looking at her, but her brows furrowed when she found no trace of jest on his profile. She spoke slowly and explicitly, as if every word was gilded.

"The evidence is locked up in a military police office in Stohess."

He finally met her eyes, seemingly apathetic and unimpressed, "So? Get a uniform and sneak in. It's really not that hard."

The muscles making her frown slowly loosened from their coil, and she found her eyes growing wide. Speechless, she gaped at him like a fish, to which he eventually clicked his tongue at and stood. As he made his way back into the stables, he muttered something that would change the course of her endeavour.

"Or just give up and let your old man rot because you were too weak to try."

* * *

"Rick, fix your 3DMG," Lyor whispered. "You look like you had an epileptic fit with a bunch of leather straps."

Stohess District. The two engineers were making their way up the steps of the Military Police's central headquarters as Rick discreetly untangled his gear.

"They couldn't come up with something more practical?" he cursed under his breath, and Lyor shushed him as they approached a few MP officers on the steps leading to the main building. Lyor straightened her uniform.

They offered a polite nod to the soldiers, swallowing their nervousness, and inconspicuously continued on their way. Lyor would never get used to the way her insides contorted each time they crossed paths with an MP soldier, but so far, the uniforms were proving to be a huge success, and she had Marie to thank for that.

 _"Here," Marie had said as she handed Lyor and Rick a sizeable bundle through the back window of her home. Lyor peered inside the clothed package and saw a pair of military boots, two military police jackets, and a neatly coiled spiral of 3DMG straps._

 _"Nile is about your size, Rick, and one of those jackets should be tailored to your size, Lyor," Marie had explained hurriedly, her eyes always glancing back to inside the house. "You better hurry. Nile will be awake any second now."_

 _Lyor thanked the woman, squeezing her hand in admiration, and Marie smiled down at her friend, compassion pulling her slender brows into a worried expression._

 _"I won't ever forget what you're doing for us, Marie."_

After her talk with Levi, all of Lyor's ideas had suddenly fallen into place. Get rid of the evidence, of course! She had nothing else to lose, and with the help of Rick's undivided loyalty to his friendship to the Reicharts, she knew she had found an idea she could work with.

Save for Markus' tyranny, Lyor had explained everything that had unfolded to Marie. Her mother's untimely death, the government's contempt, and the conspiracy behind the interior police. Her friendship with the mother had blossomed throughout the weeks of their written exchanges, and she had wrote her a seemingly interminable letter pleading for her help in her time of need. To Lyor's absolute delight, her friend had agreed to lend them her husband's uniforms for her cause, explaining that she and Nile had always harboured disdain for the interior police. However, she had no choice but to keep her husband out of the loop in this particular case, for his sake.

Now, with Lyor wearing Hanji's boots and gear, she and Rick found themselves at the MP headquarters, their disguises foolproof. They entered the marbled building, and the two gawked at the immensity of the corridors, lavish pillars lining each hallway. Soldiers milled about the ground level, talking amongst themselves as they made their way to their mess hall for breakfast, while others raced to their next meeting within the headquarters. Letting out the breath she hadn't known she was holding in, Lyor urged Rick to follow her, and two made their way to the grand staircase to their left.

"Marie said his office is on the third floor," she said quietly to him. Wordlessly, the two climbed the flights of stairs towards Markus' office, where their blueprints and projects were surely stored. Perusing the name plates beside every door of the third floor, they managed to walk through the hall unnoticed until they finally located the general's office. "Here."

Lyor turned the doorknob to discover that the door wasn't locked, and she proceeded with caution as the two engineers opened the door. The office wasn't very big, but the walls were lined with file cabinets and shelves, and in the middle of the room, they spotted a handful of familiar boxes placed on a table. Lyor almost smiled. However, upon opening the door, a face came into view from behind the boxes. Greeting the soldier, Lyor and Rick entered the room and closed the door behind them.

"Can I help you?" The solider demanded, her tone of voice dry and apprehensive. She was busy skimming through a document, and the young woman pushed up her glasses as she eyed the two, who appeared more and more out of place as each second passed.

Lyor opened her mouth to answer, but Rick beat her to it. "We're new recruits, and actually, we were wondering if we could ask general Schoenberg a few questions about the interior police brigade. We were told he'd be free around this time of day."

The woman eyed Rick head to toe, and Lyor's heartbeat began to quicken. "General Schoenberg is away until the end of the month…" Lyor's nervousness swiftly dissipated when the soldier flashed a smile at the man. "But I can set up an appointment for you if you'd like."

"You know what? That's even better!" Rick exclaimed as he approached the woman. When he got to her, he leaned his arm on a couple of stacked boxes and unleashed a type of smile Lyor wasn't used to seeing on him. Towering over her, he practically purred, "Besides, this gives me the chance to talk to you. I've always wanted to ask a beautiful officer why on _Earth_ she would put such a pretty face at risk like that!"

She giggled, and Lyor watched with a mix of annoyance and intrigue at what Rick would do next. They exchanged a few more giggles and flirts, before the soldier closed her document, and turned in order to grab the planner to schedule a time for his appointment. Turning her back to him sealed her fate. Rick's hands moved so fast over the woman that Lyor didn't actually see what he had done. In the blink of an eye, the soldier was limp in his arms. Lyor's mouth fell open.

Rick, with all traces of his previous smile completely erased from his face, gave Lyor an apathetic look.

"Pressure points." He explained flatly when she continued to gawk, and gently placed the woman's unconscious body on the floor.

Lyor could only give him a crooked smile, deciding it wasn't worth it to press the subject any further, though she wondered where the hell he had learned to do that. The flirting _and_ the pressure points.

The two promptly began their sweep of the place. They were looking for two important things: Wilhelm's letters; and the blueprints to a steam engine. The letters contained information that was imperative to keep away from the military, including price negotiations for smuggled equipment, and without proof of an operable engine, the police wouldn't be able to accuse Wilhelm of being physically capable of building machines that could endanger human life. This left the issue of the involuntary manslaughter charge, but Lyor was certain that would be something Erwin and Hanji could handle once the rest of the charges were left invalid.

"Are you jealous that Schoenberg has such a pretty assistant?" Rick brought her out of her thoughts, his voice mocking as he sifted through a box of papers.

Lyor scoffed, "Are you kidding? I'll send the poor girl a condolence card once we get out of here."

It took them about fifteen minutes to gather all the letters they could find, and an additional five for Rick to finally come across the final blueprint to the engine. Lyor stuffed as many letters into the inside pockets of her military jacket as she could, while Rick flattened the blueprints under his shirt and into his belt. Once they straightened out their uniforms, they stopped to exchange a victorious smile.

"I think Wilhelm will be really proud of us." Rick offered with a wily grin.

Laughing, Lyor replied as she moved towards the door, "That, or he'll have a heart attack."

Once Rick was close enough to the door, Lyor opened it and they stepped out. Lyor moved to take a step further into the hallway, but she felt all the blood in her face drain when she almost collided into the last person she had expected to see here. Erwin.

Time came to a stop when Lyor found herself and Rick before not only Erwin, but also Hanji and three rigid-looking military police officers. Her heart couldn't pound any louder in her ears, and her knees suddenly felt like they were made of glass. Her eyes darted between Hanji and Erwin for a handful of seconds, before one of the military police officers finally spoke. She forced herself to remain outwardly stoic, but she hoped that the two squad leaders had understood the panic in her eyes. _Don't say anything._ _You don't know us._

"Who the hell are you?" The officer barked. "And why the hell are you in the general's office?"

Erwin watched Lyor swallow the lump in her throat, but otherwise, he had made a note to applaud her for her performance another time.

"Who the hell are _we_?" She retorted with a snarl, feigning vexation. "Who the hell are _you_?"

The officer scoffed, "Major Theodor Myers of the interior police! Now tell me why the hell you were in that office before I have you two arrested!"

"Major, I am colonel Andrea Herschel, special operations, interior police," she took a step forward to punctuate her commanding tone. "And this is lieutenant colonel Norbert Gerson. We were sent on behalf of the general to extract all documents pertaining to a classified case."

"Special operations? What in the king's name are you babbling on about? There is no special ops! Brosch, Kempf, take these imposters away."

Lyor watched the two other officers approach them, but she stood her ground despite the cold sweat drenching the back of her shirt. "I would think twice about that, major. You know how choleric Markus gets when he's out of town. Remember what happened last time?"

The officer blinked as the soldiers began to bring Rick and Lyor's hands behind their backs. "Markus?"

She turned to Rick with an uncivil smirk. "Wow, he doesn't even let them call him by his first name. Can you believe that?"

Playing along, Rick returned her mocking tone with a chortle. The officer watched them exchange a look, and the palm of hands suddenly became very sweaty.

"W-what do you mean by 'what happened last time'?"

"Ohhh, you're the new guy. That's why you don't recognise us," Lyor smiled charmingly as the soldier behind her held her arms firmly together behind her back. Her gaze suddenly darkened. "Listen, kid. If you don't know about the special ops yet, it's because Markus doesn't _want_ you to know about the special ops. Now, you've got two options: arrest us, and wait for Markus to eviscerate you and your family off the map when he finds out you delayed his orders, or, we can forget this ever happened, and we'll all continue on our merry way. What do you say?"

There was a pregnant pause in the air while the officer's thoughts raced in his head. Erwin watched Lyor's iron gaze upon the officer, and that look sent a jolt of electricity down his spine. He noticed that Hanji almost had to cover her mouth with her hand to avoid laughing.

The officer threw his hands up in defeat, stammering, "Let them go!" The two soldiers unhanded them, stepped away, and regained their spots beside their commanding officer, while the latter practically trembled in his own nervous sweat. "I'm very sorry. Please excuse my confusion, colonel."

"Happens to the best of us," A shifty smile graced Lyor's lips as she patted the officer on the shoulder. She retracted her arm, and then glanced at each soldiers. When she met Erwin's gaze, he couldn't help but give her a sly smirk. "Gentlemen."

And with a nod of her head, Erwin and Hanji watched the two walk away as if they were really a colonel and her lieutenant. Exchanging a bewildered and knowing gaze, the two scouts turned their attention back to the MP officer who was reaching his sweaty hand towards the door.

"Sorry about that," the man laughed nervously as he turned the knob and opened the door. "General Schoenberg can be a very private man someti—"

Erwin and Hanji peered into the room to see what had stolen the officer's voice, and Erwin's eyes widened at the sight of a blacked out MP officer on the floor of the office. His head snapped to Lyor and Rick, and found them walking at an unnaturally fast speed at the end of the corridor.

"AFTER THEM!" The officer screeched, and the howl prompted the two engineers to break out into a full sprint as they rounded the corner towards the staircase. The MP soldiers immediately started after them, and Erwin watched Hanji "accidentally" leave her foot in the way of a soldier, making him trip and fall to the ground.

"Oops."

Erwin's thoughts were going a hundred miles an hour, but he prioritised and decided to sprint after the MP officer. He caught the back of his jacket in his large hand and pulled him to a halt. The man opened his mouth to bark at him, but Erwin spoke first.

"They're the Survey Corps' responsibility. Let us handle it." Erwin's tone was unyielding, and the look in his eyes even less so as he stared a hole into the officer. After a few seconds of deliberation, the officer caved.

"Fine! But we're still chasing after them!"

Without a moment's hesitation, Erwin began running in their direction, shouting over his shoulder. "Hanji! Let's go!"

The brunette easily caught up to him, and the pair hurdled down the stairs, Rick and Lyor having already made it down to the ground level, leaving a trail of baffled bystanders in their wake.

"We have to get to them before the MPs do. There's a good chance they'll shoot them if they get to them first." Erwin explained judiciously as they ran.

Hanji nodded, and to save time, the scout unsheathed her 3DMG handles from their holsters, and grappled a nearby ceiling pillar. Erwin followed suit, and the two flew through the air, past the cumbersome stairs, and landed adroitly on the lobby's marbled floor, ten meters from the fleeing engineers. They raced after them, out of the military HQ and into the streets of Stohess.

They gained on the two civilians before the engineers made a dash for a bystander's horse, and managed to commandeer the steed. Rick mounted first, then behind him Lyor, and the two broke into a frenzied galloped down the busy streets. They disappeared into the traffic, but Erwin couldn't be outsmarted.

He grappled onto the shingles of a building, and smoothly made his way up to the roof where he ran parallel to them, watching the pair from a bird's eye view. He noticed Hanji mimic his tactic with the building opposite to him, and the nimble squad leaders observed the couple like hawks, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. The engineers swerved into an alleyway in an attempt to throw the scouts off, but Erwin only nodded to Hanji, knowingly.

They jumped off their respective roofs, their 3DMG lines hooking into the buildings across, easily closing the distance between them and Rick and Lyor. Erwin expertly released his lines before immediately grappling the ground a few meters ahead of their horse. Then, without warning, he skilfully tackled Lyor right off the back of the horse. She gasped as she hit the ground, and he landed purposefully on top of her, a knee on her lower back, her hands caught behind her back in his left hand, and his forearm pressed against her shoulders to keep her down.

"Don't fight me," he threatened into her ear, and she shuddered at the heat of his breath against her skin. She squirmed against him, but she could only grunt in response for the weight of his much larger body pinning hers was crushing her lungs against the ground. Her head at an angle, they were able to make eye contact, and the determination in her eyes was practically palpable to him. In another circumstance, he would've stopped to drink in how gorgeous she looked underneath him glaring at him with such passion.

"Lyor!" Rick shouted, his steed rearing in panic as he pulled on the reins to stop.

Erwin made the mistake of glancing towards the man, for it only took that second for Lyor to turn her head at the opportune angle in order to sink her teeth into the blond's arm. Erwin winced, and ground his teeth to repress a yelp of pain, and the split second she managed to catch him off guard allowed her to squirm out of his hold. As she escaped from him, sprinting towards her friend, the recognisable sound of a gun cocking beside him made his head jerk toward the noise to find an MP officer kneeled expertly beside the blond with his loaded gun, aimed at the fleeing girl.

His eyes widened in horror as he heard the MP's commanding officer from a few feet away ordering the man to fire. It was his turn for time to slow, and he thought his ankle would surely break at the rate at which he twisted his body towards the other man.

"DON'T SHOOT!" He bellowed, and his hand reached out for the MP's pointed gun.

As the bullet left the barrel of the officer's gun, filling the silence with a deafening crack, Erwin pushed the nose of the gun towards the sky with his hand to thwart his aim. But when Erwin's eyes looked back to Lyor, her body was on the ground, limp as a glove.

* * *

A/N: Holy balls, this was a hard one to write. I dunno if it's just because I'm stressed out of my mind, but I've been having some serious writer's block. I have my whole outline from beginning to end finished, but for some reason, I just can't seem to just actually freakin' write it! Hhhhuuuu... Also this is definitely not my best writing, so I'm a little bummed out, but whatever. I've been DYING to get this chapter out because I love it so much ;-; My poor, law-breaking babies. Also poor Erwin and Hanji lol they're just trying their best and here's goddamn Timon and Pumba ruining everything they're working towards

So, yeah! Lemme know what's on your mind after reading this! Also Erwin is starting to get hella thirsty boi calm yo ass down

HEARTS Your comments and insights are the reason I write HEARTS

 **BlueSnap:** OF COURSE I NOTICED YOU R U KIDDING? My heart races every time I get a comment; I get so freaking excited to hear what you think. I took what you said into consideration and tried to include some more introspective Erwin in this chapter. Thoughts? And thoughts on the overall chapter? THANK YOU SO MUCH I LOVE YOU AND WOULDNT BE ABLE TO WRITE THIS WITHOUT YOUR SUPPORT


	15. Chapter 15: Crimson

In the dead of night, a man sat in the shadows of a deserted bar, his hands buried deep within his pockets. The reflection of the candles illuminating the room danced in his mossy green eyes as he inspected each being that ambled through the front door. With each deception, his leg jerked harder under the table, up and down in anticipation.

"Markus," a voice croaked just as he was beginning to feel his patience run out.

His gaze darted to a cloaked silhouette taking a seat across his table. The MP general didn't bother with formalities.

"Do you have it?" He pressed.

Without a word, the hooded figure shuffled under their clothes before pushing an envelope forward on the wooden table. Markus gathered it into his hands and opened it. Inside, he found a handwritten letter, and what Eldians wouldn't recognise to be a photograph.

The general ran his thumb over the features of a young, green-eyed woman.

"Now, Markus, pay attention. There's been a change of plans…"

* * *

Amber eyes flickered opened. Greeted by an alabaster ceiling, she swallowed through the dryness of her throat, becoming painstakingly aware of her chapped lips and the infirmary room she was in. Her head lolled to the side, and she saw a bespectacled soldier sitting in a chair by her bed, reading from a stack of papers. Upon seeing the brunette, a set of images flashed through her head, and her heart began to race. The sound of a gun firing rang in her ears over the shouting of soldiers, then a burst of pain as she fell to the dusty ground. The last thing she could remember was Rick and Hanji's distressed voices while all of her energy strangely seeped from her body.

In a panicked attempt to sit up, Lyor scrambled under her sheets. Searing pain shot from her right shoulder all the way down her back, and the young woman gasped in pain as she leaned against the bed's headboard. She heard a shuffle of papers, but her eyes were screwed shut from the throbbing pain.

"So she lives."

Her fingers digging into the skin of her aching shoulder, Lyor managed to glance at Hanji, who stood from her seat and summoned a nurse. Through the pain and panic, she spoke hurriedly.

"How long was I out? Where's Rick? And my father? Is he—"

"Calm down before your sutures tear open," Her superior replied, helping a pillow behind Lyor's back to ease her discomfort. "Everyone's fine; you've only been here for two days."

Upon seeing the smile Hanji offered, Lyor let out a breath and reclined further into the soft fabric of the pillow, and a nurse with a crisp white apron over her military uniform appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. Lyor let the woman examine her without any objections while Hanji took back her seat. The engineer nodded when the nurse warned her not to make any sudden movements, readjusting the bandage that was wrapped around her shoulder and upper torso, then handing her a pill to take to subdue the pain. Once she helped Lyor take the painkiller, she disappeared behind a door with the promise of a warm meal for her patient. Lyor turned to Hanji, who had been quietly watching her.

"Where are we? What happened to me?"

"We're back at headquarters, and you, my friend, got shot in the shoulder by a Military Police officer."

"Why am I not in prison?"

Hanji flashed a lopsided grin, amused that Lyor didn't seem the least bit surprised. "We agreed to keep the fact that the MP shot a civilian from the press if they didn't arrest you and Rick."

She seemed to sink further into her headboard in realisation. "I can't believe they let us go that easily…"

"I didn't say you wouldn't be punished. We left the part where you bit Erwin out of our reports."

Embarrassed by the squad leader's words, Lyor offered a sour smile before giving her friend an honest stare.

"Thank you for your patience, Hanji. I'm sorry we put you through all of this, but I didn't know what else to do."

The young captain watched her for a few moments before she sighed and pushed up her glasses in exasperation. "I'm just glad you weren't shot through the chest. If it hadn't been for Erwin's quick reflexes, you wouldn't be here to apologise to me. Or to him."

After the two women exchanged a meaningful smile, their attention was drawn to the sound of the infirmary door opening, revealing a familiar blond captain, as if on cue. His eyes scanned the room before they finally locked with Lyor's, and she extended a smile.

He didn't return it.

As he approached the two, he courteously asked Hanji if he could speak to Lyor alone, and the brunette stood to leave, but not without turning to her squad member one last time.

"I'll be back to check on you after work. Take it easy, Reichart."

A tense silence almost immediately fell upon the two as Hanji quietly shut the door behind her. It only took a few steps for Erwin to walk to her bedside, and as he moved in sullenness, Lyor scrutinised the soldier's face. His indomitable mask never fell, but Lyor was observant; it was obvious to her that he was irritated. He set down a small stack of papers on her nightstand, then took a seat in the chair by her bed, his shoulders square and his jaw taut.

"Review these and sign them; the commander needs them to finalise your suspension from work."

As taken aback as she was by the abrupt news, she suppressed any comments of shock, and instead nodded silently, as still as a mouse. She didn't dare say anything, or even look at him; the bite in his intonation was nothing she had ever witnessed before, and she felt her palms becoming clammy.

Just as the silence between them was becoming unbearable, the nurse from before returned to Lyor's side with a tray of food. Pointedly, Erwin watched Lyor's every move as the nurse set the tray on her lap. She thanked her, and the woman excused herself. He watched her start to pick apart a piece of bread, her nervousness apparent to him. As hungry as she was, she suddenly felt self-conscious of her eating under his imposing gaze, and she preferred to start with something she couldn't spill on herself in panic.

Finally, he spoke, his voice cryptic, "How are you feeling?"

Her eyes rose from her hands, and she met his piercing gaze. Tentatively, she replied, "Fine, but I'm sure that'll change once the painkillers wear off."

Erwin nodded silently, breaking their eye contact to shift in his seat from what Lyor could only guess was impatience growing uncharacteristically out of his control. Lyor noticed the twitch in his jaw, and her stomach suddenly felt very heavy. She averted her gaze back to her bread, chewing the inside of her cheek. The iron curtain between them became heavier and heavier as the seconds passed, until she could no longer suppress her thoughts.

"You seem agitated." She voiced matter-of-factly, a purposeful understatement. They locked eyes once again, and Erwin studied her for what seemed like eternity.

"Your actions were unworthy of you, Lyor." He finally commented, his brows tightly knit.

She frowned, processed, then opened her mouth to answer, only for him to continue.

"I'm astounded by your recklessness. Not only did you prove you have absolutely no respect for Hanji and I, but you've also proven your lack of faith in us."

"But—"

"I was sickened to learn that you involved an innocent civilian," he spoke firmly. He never lost his composure, but his voice rose considerably when Lyor threatened to interrupt him. "I thought Marie was your friend. I never thought you'd use her for personal gain."

The young woman's face contorted in offense. "Use her? She volunteered to help!"

"You had no right accepting her help."

"And you have no right telling me what I can and cannot accept!"

The man folded his hands in his lap, his eyes never leaving hers, and his voice dropped to a lower register as if he was scolding a child. "You put a pregnant mother in harm's way by allowing her to help you impersonate an officer. Do you not think about the consequences to your actions?"

Lyor stopped to search his expression, her gaze unyielding and defiant. She hadn't known he was capable of patronising. "Of course I do, but I weighed them against my desperation and realised I wasn't left with any other options."

"You're telling me you'd sacrifice an innocent friend's life for your father's?"

"Wouldn't you have done the same for yours?"

Erwin didn't say anything to this, fuelling Lyor's imprudence of speech. She spoke without thinking, his patronising tone and her exhaustion overcoming her logic.

"Well at least I had the guts to try to save _mine_."

A harrowing silence saturated the hospital room as Lyor's venom seeped into his very core, and all he could do was stare blankly at her. For a split second, she could have sworn he had looked hurt, but even if he had, he quickly covered it with a derisive and forbidding chortle, standing from his seat.

This ominous laugh and smile — an expression she had never fathomed possible by this man — instantly brought her to the realisation of her words, and her world stopped spinning. Her stomach sank as she watched the man she adored — the man she loved — begin to leave, struck by her bitter words. How could she?

"Oh, Erwin, wait." She pleaded as he began to turn his back to her. He didn't stop despite her plea, heading towards the door.

He answered dryly without looking at her, "Finish that paperwork and get it to Hanji before the end of the day."

Desperate and compunctious, she threw the bedsheets from her body, inelegantly spilling her tray on the bed and floor as she stood to follow him to the door. Weak from her injury and bedrest, she moved as fast as her legs could carry her, her hospital gown shuffling loudly with her movements. Her hand found Erwin's shoulder, and she squeezed it just as his hand gripped the door handle.

She grovelled, "Erwin, it's never okay for me to talk to you like that. Please don't—"

He turned to her. The mordancy of his gaze made her throat close up, her voice failing. She never wanted to see this glower ever again.

"I've said everything worth saying. And so have you."

With that, the blond left, leaving her to stare helplessly at the door shutting calmly, but most unmistakably, in her face.

* * *

Stifling a yawn, a young MP soldier stood guard late in the night outside a small house in Wall Rose, a musket slung over his shoulder. He and his squad had been assigned a rather easy mission: supervise a certain Lyor Reichart for the duration of three weeks, wherein the young woman wasn't permitted to leave her house until her father's trial. Food supplies were brought to her once a week by her colleagues from work but otherwise, all outside communications were forbidden.

Two weeks had already passed, and the young officer hadn't faced any difficulties; he and his squad had been alternating supervision shifts. The civilian was quite even tempered in his eyes, and he wondered what she could have possibly done to be placed on house arrest — their superiors hadn't told them any details. He'd noticed that she mainly occupied herself with reading and writing, and on occasion, she had even invited him in to silently share a cup of tea.

As he tried to repress yet another yawn, movement from down the empty street caught his eye: a man was walking in his direction. He swallowed the yawn and adjusted the strap of his weapon over his shoulder as the silhouette drew closer. Under the glow of the street light, a familiar face became recognisable to the young solider, and he immediately straightened his posture as his hand rose to form a salute, repressing a gasp.

Lyor was in her kitchen, deciding between two different bottles of liquor to have a drink from when she heard a knock on her door. She clicked her tongue, wondering what her guard could want so late at night, and set down the bottles. As she walked to her front door, she rolled her right shoulder, letting out a pointed exhale when she felt the freshly mended muscles around her injury twinge; a few weeks had allowed her wound to heal almost entirely, but her tissues still weren't ready for any overexertion.

Reaching the entrance, Lyor opened the door, her brows knit. "It's practically midnight. What do you wa—"

"Hello, Lyor."

A familiar officer stood before her, dressed in his summer MP jacket, standing tall but never without his grin. She shuddered involuntarily.

"Markus? What are you doing here?"

The brown haired general looked perpetually amused. "Relieving my officer of his duty for the night. What better company than the mission's fiancé himself?"

Lyor gawked, speechless as an array of emotions took turns spinning inside her head. Should she scream at him? Should she hit him? Slam the door in his face?

Just as she was about to decide on the latter, he spoke, his voice like velvet.

"May I come in?"

Though her fists were clenched, she decided that causing him bodily harm at this very moment was very unwise given her current situation. She stepped away from the doorway, reluctantly inviting him in, and closed the door behind him after confirming her previous guard had really been dismissed for the night.

"Can I get you anything? Water? Arsenic? An alibi for my father's eventual murder?" She spoke bitingly without meeting his gaze.

They entered the kitchen, and Lyor returned to her much needed alcohol. Markus shrugged off his coat, chuckling at her characteristic banter and hung his coat on the back of a kitchen table chair, leaving him in his dark button up shirt. Casually, he took a seat in said chair and watched as Lyor prepared her evening drink at the kitchen counter, her back to him.

" _Darling_ , you know your mere presence is enough accommodation for me," he retorted.

Lyor scoffed, deciding on a bottle of rum. "Then to what do I owe the pleasure of yours so late at night, _love_?"

"Well, I returned mere hours ago from my trip, and I thought I'd surprise you with a visit," he explained carefully, a playful glint in his eyes as he observed her. From his angle, he had a perfect view of her hands, and he duly noted the absence of a certain ring from her left as she grabbed a glass from her cupboards. Unfazed, he continued, "Although, I have to admit, the report I found on my desk about your little masquerade made it impossible for me to spend one more minute away from you."

Lyor seethed quietly, turning around with the rum and glass in hand as Markus shared a laugh with himself. She set the bottle and glass down on the kitchen table and sat in the seat adjacent to Markus.

"Gods, I've missed you," he breathed sarcastically, his devilish smirk never faltering.

"Cut the horse shit, Schoenberg. You've proven to me that you won't keep your word, whether I play out your idiotic fantasies or not," she spat, pouring the dark liquor into her glass. "For such blatant insurrection, I can only assume you're here to finish me off."

"There you go again — assuming the worst of me," he hummed reflectively. She watched him over her glass. "Your father's arrest was out of my control, and your friend succumbed to his injuries. I really had nothing to do with either of them. And as for you, it looks like you've already been punished quite appropriately. How is your shoulder?"

Silence fell over them, and Lyor tipped her head back, downing the alcohol in a single gulp. She winced at the sting and her anger bubbling; she couldn't stand to hear him speak of her father and Heinrich.

She heard him sigh when she didn't react to him, and after Lyor poured herself another drink, Markus slid the bottle over his way to take a swig directly from the mouth. She glared.

He continued, nonchalantly, "But you'll be pleased to learn that I've ordered for your father's release."

Silently, her eyes darted to him. They sat in a nonvocal staring contest for several minutes as the news settled. Given her absolute nonexistent trust in Markus, she didn't know what to make of it. Her eyes blazing with suspicion, she scrutinised him for any signs of a twisted joke. She snatched the bottle away from him, her left hand tightly gripping the bottle's neck. He was smiling, a hand under his chin as he drank in her reaction. She knew something was off, and she didn't have to prompt him to continue.

"Looks like that evidence you stole never made it back to us, and without it, we have nothing to base his sentence on," the general explained, his voice lilting. She wondered if a certain pair of Scout captains had anything to do with that fact, as she didn't recall ever finding the papers she had stolen after the whole debacle. "I'd _ask_ for it back, but quite frankly, it'd be a waste of energy given what's in store for this land. The attack will surely take care of Wilhelm for me."

By the end of his sentence, he seemed to be mumbling to himself more than he was to her. She blinked, eyeing him warily. "What attack?"

Instead of answering her, his hand reached for hers, prying her fingers from the bottle. Gently, he set her hand down on the table and blanketed it with his much larger one, caressing the skin on the back of her hand. He ignored her question, and instead asked, "What happened to your ring?"

She retracted her hand from his, hissing and furious from him purposefully ignoring her questions, "What attack, Markus?"

He watched her like a hawk, his grin eerie, and he repeated his question. Every syllable was articulated so patronisingly that her hand twitched to slap him across the face. "I asked you where your ring was."

She stood from her seat, fuming and thoroughly fed up with his intimidation. "Get out!"

Without warning, the man's expression fell, and he moved faster than she had ever seen him. He propelled himself to his feet with such force that the chair he sat in clattered to the tiled floor, and before she could react, she was forced to her feet, and dreadfully trapped between the officer and the kitchen counter. His hand had regained his place around her wrist, but this time, his other was snaked around her throat as he glared down at her with an ominous smirk. He purposefully gave her a split second to realise the position she was in before the fingers around her throat squeezed. Hard.

"I'm quite bored of that tone, my Lyor," he uttered darkly, the emerald of his eyes being the only thing she could focus on. "I'm your husband, and you will learn to speak to me with respect."

He choked her, crushing her windpipe in his hand as she wheezed and sputtered for oxygen, her hands clawing at his iron grip. His hold was so strong that he had lifted her from the ground, by her neck, and her feet barely touched the floor. Her feet clambered for purchase, and she raked her nails so hard that she began to draw blood from his skin. He didn't falter. He only watched her struggle against him, and as the seconds ticked by, she became more and more unsure if she was going to live through this.

Hot tears stung her eyes from the crushing grip as she quickly came to the realisation that she had no way out. The pressure in her head was oppressive, and her vision began to escape her. At this rate, she thought her eyes would pop out of her skull. One of her hands jerked wildly behind her, twitching for something, anything, she could use to free herself.

That's when she felt her fingers graze over something smooth and cold.

"Shh, shh," Markus wiped the tears from Lyor's face and pressed a kiss on her forehead. "Don't struggle. I just want to teach you a lesson…"

Her muscle memory came through for her, and her fingers encircled around a bottle's neck. Aided by adrenaline, she mustered every remaining ounce of strength in her body, cocking her arm behind her before swinging it down on Markus' head so quickly that not even his military reflexes could protect him.

A sickening clang echoed through the entire house when the glass made contact with his skull, promptly followed by the thud of a body on a tiled floor and the shattering of the bottle. Released from his death grip, Lyor dropped to her knees, coughing and blubbering between the awful wheezes of her nearly empty lungs. As she slowly regained her vision, she watched the tiles under Markus' unconscious head, bit by bit, turn a shade of crimson.

* * *

Bricks was quiet on a Tuesday night, and Erwin could enjoy his drink that much more without the ceaseless, drunken jabbering of people with no better place to be than the bar. He sat beside Mike at the counter, the ice cubes in his third glass of whiskey clinking around as he spun the drink in a small circle. He and his old friend were deep in conversation about how long it'd take Nile to be fired from his new rank, and he had to admit that it felt good to laugh.

The past few weeks had been nothing but stress for the captain, and the blond was in dire need of a drink. A fun drink. Erwin wasn't prone to sulking, and he easily buried the urge to sulk with work. However, these days, whenever he found himself oppressed with a spare moment to himself, he found it impossible not to. Between the unfruitful Reichart case, a new expedition, and Lyor's house arrest, he was up to his neck in constant negativity. His unbefitting deprecation had apparently been palpable, but only to a very old friend who knew him well, and Mike had offered to take his captain out for a drink.

Not a word had been uttered about his sudden lack of interaction with a certain woman, and whether or not Mike had done this on purpose, Erwin didn't care. All he wanted to do was drink with his buddy, and for a fleeting moment, be objectively merry.

But the illusion didn't last long, for within the hour, the better part of the reason for Erwin's low spirits stumbled uncouthly through the bar's doors.

"That deserter won't last more than a year, if you ask me," Mike affirmed, knocking his empty mug of beer on the wooden counter. The bartender ambled towards the patron and replaced his pint with a new, full one. The two soldiers were too busy laughing at Mike's anecdote concerning Nile's alcohol tolerance to notice the bartender gawking at something across the bar. The sudden mute that fell over the entire establishment was what triggered their reflexes.

Mike and Erwin turned at the clamour, only to see Lyor limping across the bar, her eyes wild with panic and her skin drained of all its colour. There weren't many patrons that night, but that only served to draw even more attention to the seemingly disoriented, highly disheveled girl. All eyes on the stranger, she advanced deeper into the establishment. She was looking frantically for someone, but Erwin wasn't convinced she knew whom.

The two soldiers practically leapt from their stools at the sight, and abandoning their drinks. Throwing all grudges to the wind, Erwin rushed to her with Mike close behind. Upon her eyes meeting his, she sucked in a trembling breath and ran towards him. When he reached the young woman, pure relief washed over her with such force that her knees turned to glass, and she would have fallen to the floor had he not caught her in his arms.

Erwin peeled Lyor carefully from where she had stumbled into his chest and held her up by her elbows, pulling the brunette closer to his body for support, and he searched her face for any clues as to what had rendered her to this ghastly state. He saw her lips move, but no words were coming out. She merely trembled speechlessly. Nimbly, Erwin slid off his jacket — taking only one hand off of her at a time to do so — and wrapped her in it.

She barely managed a whisper, and his stomach sank. "Please help me."

That was when he saw the painful red mark around her neck, instantly recognising the type of altercation. His ground his teeth.

"Who did this to you?" he asked simply, his tone unyielding but gentle as to not scare her more than she already was.

His hands still under her elbows, her forearms were splayed against his, and as she spoke, she gripped his arms in despair.

"Markus," she replied, her voice hoarse. With each word, she pulled him closer. Diplomacy and eloquentness absent from her current state of mind, she continued, "He's in my house. I think he's going to kill me."

He frowned deeply. He squeezed her back, grabbing her upper arms to hold her steady against him. Without another word, Erwin turned to Mike, who had been listening to every syllable, and the two men nodded to each other in a silent understanding. Mike disappeared from the bar within seconds, his mission only known to his captain.

"Come," Erwin hushed as he wrapped his arm around her and led her out of the bar to his home.

* * *

 _A/N: Hey, friends! I'm alive and well! Sorry for the hiatus; between finals and me moving back across the Atlantic, I was financially, emotionally, and physically overwhelmed. Basically, if you're interested in this at all, I moved to France (where I was born) from Canada (immigrated here when I was 3) to study musicology, and it turns out the program in France wasn't at ALL what I wanted to do. Having been away for months from my family, my cat (lmao), and live-in boyfriend of five years, I was riddled with depression. I took another hit when I realised I didn't fit in with my overly-competitive peers, and that I disliked my program and was disliked in return by my profs because I was "Canadian" and not "French". (even though I speak, write, and read fluently in French with no accent, given that I was raised by my French family. In French, lol)_

 _While the price of post-secondary education is laughable when compared to North America's, the cost of living in France is extremely high, and running solely on my savings, I was malnourished as I couldn't afford much food due to my $700 (460 €) rent (for a 18x18m2 studio apartment). In addition, I wasn't eligible for student loans or bursaries as I had to had been living in France for at least three years to have access to those funds. I moved in July 2018._

 _So, long story short, I had a meltdown and dropped everything. After weeks of torment and deliberation, and with no financial help, I managed to scrounge up enough money for a one-way plane ticket home, and now I'm running on a virtually empty bank account. I'm currently on a 24/7 job hunt, but so far, nothin'._

 _I love creating, and I'm not sure if some of you are aware, but I aspire to become a soundtrack composer one day for video games, TV shows, movies, etc. You can listen to the stuff I've already composed on my soundcloud: /salmonbutter. I'm a highly creative person; I make comics and paint (check out my tumblr), write, compose, and play several instruments at a professional level. I've studied music for nearly 20 years, and I've also been writing and posting my works since I was 12. I plan to write many works of fanfiction, and I HYSTERICALLY want to finish this particular one. I even have two other AUs in the works to follow this one!_

 _However, as we all know, the artsy-fartsies are financially disliked in our capitalist world, and I'm currently very low on money at the moment. If you've been an absolute Saint and read to the very end of this blurb, here comes the wretched part where I ask you for your support:_

 _I have a Ko-fi account, /salmonbutter, where you can donate as little as $3, and I will absolutely and unquestionably cry of pure gratitude. If you enjoy my work and decide to generously support me, I can confirm that I will be able to update weekly as I had been in the past. Your donations will contribute to me getting back on my feet, and applying to new schools in Canada to pursue my dreams. They will also contribute to regular updates and goodies. (I may or may not be working on illustrations to this work) I love this fic, I love you guys, and I love creating this world for you all. Please allow me to continue to create for you! (￣▽￣)ゞ_

 _Please know that I completely understand if you are incapable of financial donations. Your comments and feedback also keep me emotionally alive, and I completely respect your individual situations. 3 If you can spare me a digital coffee, please do! If not, send me a virtual hug and be prepared to get the life hugged out of you back._

 _THANK YOU ALL! I hope you enjoy the new chapter! Let's all start a Murder Markus club! MWAH!_

Orcasforlife97: Oh, god I know! I'M nervous for her and I know exactly what's going to happen LOL Thank you for your support :D You are seriously so sweet! I can't WAIT to read your thoughts on this chapter! I hope you liked it!

BlueSnap: Sorry to keep you waiting! Thank you soooo much for your comment! I'm always waiting to hear what you think :') Your input really means a lot, and I take it into consideration every time I start a new chapter. You actually have a lot of influence on me, whether you know it or not! Let me know what you thought, yeah? _  
_


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